MARDAN, Pakistan (AWW) – Until a few years ago, Wahab Gul rarely had any reasons to travel to the city.

   Even with 10 acres of land he had nothing to sell, and life back in the village was a losing battle against water logging and salinity.

   He was on the bus to Mardan city, about 150km west of capital city Islamabad, with a shopping list that included stuff for his children and wife.

   "I used to grow rice and sugarcane but the harvest was poor," said Wahab Gul. “No vegetables or corn because there was always water in the field.”

   The water logged fields in Mardan and Charsadda districts between River Kabul in the South, River Swat in the West and the Malakand hills in the North used to be well-known for high crop yield. 

   An elaborate irrigation system, built in 1885, comprised of the Lower Swat Canal System and included a main canal and ten major distribution outlets, including an arrangement to drain excess water. Those were the days when the water table was about 70-80 feet below ground level. 

   The water level rose to around 2-3 feet after the 1970s and in many of the low lying areas the fields were submerged under stagnant water.

   It was also about the time when the Water and Power Development Authority (WAPDA) of Pakistan launched the Salinity Control and Reclamation Project (ACARP) to try and reclaim the lost land in Mardan.

   According to Ali Khan, sub-divisional officer of WAPDA, the SCARP has already reclaimed 123,000 acres of land including fields in Mardan and Charsadda districts.

   The Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) supported the land project.

   "The water table in the SCARP area came to the ground level during the rainy season and this caused major decline in crop yield,” said Ali Khan. “Because the production was low, the villagers were very poor."

   The SCARP has built an extended network of perforated PVC pipes about six-feet below the ground in the entire area to drain water out of the fields into a drainage system.

   The perforation and filtration systems are based on the permeability of the soil and Khan says the system will work for another 75 years.

   "I now grow sugarcane enough to produce 200 pura gur (about 16,000 kilograms of a sugar-like product), which is almost double of what I used to make," said Gul.

   Gul never grew corn or other dry-season crops which he now does. "I also grow vegetables now," he added. 

   Yar Muhammad another farmer from Shamanroz village in the SCARP has also seen his share of the yield grow over time.

   He cultivates on a 25-acre plot belonging to his landlord and gets to keep a third of the produce.

   “Now I grow enough to feed my family and send my children to school,” he said.

   The success of the project has also caused another problem that could change the fortunes of the villagers, however.

   Many of the once water-logged fields now need regular irrigation and not all farmers have been able to irrigate their fields with the water they get to use.

   "Some fields have run dry after the pipes were installed,” said Muhammad. “Water allotted to us is not enough to irrigate all the land I use. 

   The problem of maintenance of the under-ground pipes is another emerging issue.

   "There are some problems in the sub-surface pipes in some places. The under-ground pipes have been damaged and there is no repair work," said Wajid Khan of Buner Gul village.

  WAPDA officials dismiss the claims saying that that the dryness of the soil is more a result of the extended draught in the region rather than water being drained away.

   "The water table has gone below nine feet our pipes are only six feet below the surface,” said Khan Muhammad, executive engineer at WAPDA.

   Project officials added that the pipes would not develop problems for many years if they are regularly maintained, which however, is the responsibility of another department.

   Encouraged by the success of the project, the WAPDA has launched a new scheme to cover areas of Mardan that are still water-logged.

(END/AWW/IPSAP/SK/BB/050406)