By Engineer Arshad H Abbasi, edited by Musa Arshad Abbasi  

A Comprehensive Technical and Policy Framework for Sustainable Water Management(2026 Edition)
Prepared as a humanitarian service to the people of Islamabad and the Islamic Republic of Pakistan
“Water is the lifeblood of a nation. To waste it is to court disaster; to manage it wisely is to secure the future.”

PREFACE: WHY A WATER DOCTRINE?

This document represents the first comprehensive attempt in the history of Pakistan’s federal capital to consolidate more than six decades of technical studies, feasibility reports, master plans, engineering assessments, and institutional reviews into a single, coherent Water Reference Book for Islamabad. It is both a professional doctrine and a personal record of my experiences while working for the Capital Development Authority (CDA) from 2005 to 2007, during which I worked on the rehabilitation of critical components of Islamabad’s water supply infrastructure.

The need for such a doctrine arises from a tragic reality. Islamabad has been the subject of more high-quality water studies by foreign consultants than almost any other city in South Asia, yet it has implemented fewer recommendations than most. Since 16 March 1962, when Abdul Hamid Chaudhry, Director General of Works at CDA, published the first water development strategy for Islamabad, successive studies repeatedly identified the same problems and proposed many of the same solutions. The landmark work of JICA  of 1970, 1971, 1987, 1988, and 1991, along with numerous later assessments, all pointed toward the urgent need for leakage control, watershed protection, transmission efficiency, groundwater regulation, metering, and institutional reform. Yet decade after decade, Islamabad witnessed a pattern of brilliant diagnosis followed by institutional paralysis.

This doctrine aims to break that cycle. It does not introduce speculative or untested ideas. Instead, it extracts, synthesizes, and prioritizes the recommendations that engineers, planners, and international experts have been repeating for more than half a century — recommendations that were too often ignored, delayed, or abandoned.

The report also reflects my own firsthand experience while working on the rehabilitation of the Khanpur Dam Water Supply Project, which delivers water to Islamabad and Rawalpindi through an approximately 19.5-kilometre open channel leading to the Sangjani Treatment Plant. My work involved identifying and addressing critical leakages within Islamabad’s water supply network and contributing to the development of the auxiliary spillway at Simly Dam — a secondary, generally ungated spillway designed to function during extreme flood conditions and increase reservoir storage capacity during peak seasons.

At the same time, I witnessed another silent crisis unfolding: the destruction of the watershed itself. One of the most painful memories from that period was my effort to protect the Patriata Forest in the New Murree region, where forest cover in the Simly Dam watershed had already declined by nearly 46 percent. The degradation of these forests directly threatens Islamabad’s long-term water security, yet watershed protection has consistently remained absent from mainstream policy priorities.

The doctrine is organized chronologically, tracing the evolution of understanding about Islamabad’s water resources from the earliest years of the capital’s construction to the present crisis. It then moves thematically through the interconnected challenges of leakage control, groundwater depletion, watershed degradation, metering, illegal connections, transmission inefficiencies, and institutional reform. Finally, it presents practical recommendations phased over the short, medium, and long term.

The central argument of this report is straightforward: before pursuing expensive new dams or politically attractive mega-projects, Islamabad must first repair the failures within its existing water supply system. More than 50 percent of the city’s treated water is lost through leakages, illegal connections, and outdated infrastructure. Illegal tapping of the Simly Dam supply pipeline alone reportedly costs Islamabad nearly 10 million gallons per day (MGD), reducing expected supply from approximately 34 MGD to only 24–25 MGD. Over thousands of illegal connections have been identified along the 40-kilometre transmission line, particularly in areas such as Bhara Kahu, where water is diverted for domestic, agricultural, and commercial use.

Similarly, the long-proposed direct tunnel and conveyance system from Khanpur Dam to Islamabad — repeatedly recommended by both JICA and WAPDA — remains unimplemented despite its enormous technical and economic benefits. Such a tunnel would not only recover more than 20 MGD currently lost through theft and leakage, but would also significantly reduce the massive electricity costs incurred in pumping water upward from the Sangjani Treatment Plant, located approximately 450 feet below the mean elevation of Islamabad.

This report argues that leakage control, direct transmission infrastructure, and universal water metering could together generate water savings greater than the current effective storage contribution of Simly Dam — and at a fraction of the cost of constructing new reservoirs. Yet these solutions suffer from one fundamental disadvantage: they are largely invisible. Unlike roads, flyovers, or monuments, a robust underground water system does not provide immediate political visibility. As a result, successive governments have preferred highly visible infrastructure projects over sustainable investments that directly improve the lives of ordinary citizens.

The greatest tragedy, however, is deeply personal and institutional at the same time. Most ordinary residents of Islamabad still depend on tap water for daily consumption, while many senior decision-makers and officials rely exclusively on bottled water. If the policymakers responsible for the city’s water governance are themselves dependent upon the public supply system, many of the problems identified in this report would likely have been addressed decades ago.