Swabi salinity control and reclamation project

Abstract

At the beginning of the last century, in the tribal territory of India's North West Frontier Province, British engineers constructed the Upper Swat Canal system. The project comprised diversion works on the River Swat to provide 2400 cusec (68 m3/s) via a canal network to irrigate over 300 000 acres (121 400 ha) of fertile rainfed land. The civil engineering is bold and imaginative, incorporating tunnels, multi-span aqueducts in stone masonry, steel siphons under major river gorges and notch fall structures, all superb examples of the engineering excellence of that era. This paper describes the rehabilitation and upgrading of the system which was carried out by the Government of Pakistan between 1991 and 1999 under a US$162 million project, funded by the Asian Development Bank.