Swat River Canal
This article has been extracted from THE IMPERIAL GAZETTEER OF INDIA , 1908. OXFORD, AT THE CLARENDON PRESS. |
Note: National, provincial and district boundaries have changed considerably since 1908. Typically, old states, ‘divisions’ and districts have been broken into smaller units, units, and many tahsils upgraded to districts.Many units have since been renamed. Therefore, this article is being posted mainly for its historical value.
Swat River Canal
A perennial irrigation work in Peshawar District, North-West Frontier Province, taking off from the right bank of the Swat river at Abazai, and irrigating about 155,000 acres. The place of a weir is taken by a natural reef stretching across the river below the head regulator. The regulator has seven openings of 6 feet each, and is protected at each end by fortified blockhouses, forming one of the chain of frontier posts garrisoned by the border military police. The main channel has a width of 31 feet and a depth when full of 7.35 feet; it can carry a supply of 865 cubic feet per second. In a total length of 22.1 miles there are no less than 21 drainage works, which carry under or over the canal the water of the numerous mountain torrents that intersect its course. These are for the most part crossed by massive stone aqueducts, and the canal banks for some distance above and below these crossings are of a great height. About 186 miles of distributary channels have been aligned on the watersheds between the torrents, the most important being the trans-Kalpani distributary, which has a discharge of 94 cubic feet per second and a length of nearly 29/2 miles, and in which there are fourteen drainage works of importance.
The tract commanded by the canal is that portion of the dry, sparsely populated Yusufzai plain which is bounded on the north by the canal itself, on the west and south by the Swat and Kabul rivers, and on the east by the Mokam nullah, a tributary of the Kalpani. The country rises so rapidly on the north of the canal up to the foot of the hills that it cannot be brought under command. The canal tract itself is cut up by innumerable nullahs running generally from north to south, and carrying the drainage from the hills on the north to the Swat and Kabul rivers on the west and south. The great cost of the canal was due to the difficulty of taking it across these channels, some of which are of great size.
The main canal was opened in 1885, and the trans-Kalpani dis- tributary in 1899. The Naushahra minor, a channel irrigating two grass farms near Naushahra, was constructed in 190 1. The area irrigated in both harvests during the three years ending 1901-2 averaged 161,000 acres, and in 1903-4 it was 159,000 acres. The total capital expenditure to the end of March, 1904, was 41.4 lakhs. The canal was originally sanctioned as a protective work, no profit being anticipated, owing to the high cost of construction. The whole accumulated interest charges were, however, paid off in fifteen years, and the net revenue in 1903-4 (Rs. 4,57,000) exceeded 10 per cent, on the capital expended. The canal has thus become a remunerative investment to Government, besides contributing in no small degree to the peace of the border. It fails, however, to touch the part of Yusuf- zai between the main channel and the border hills to the north, where water is badly needed ; and it is accordingly proposed to drive a tunnel through the Malakand range and tap the Swat river near Chakdarra. As the river is fed from the snows, it attains its greatest volume in the summer months, and thus water would be abundant just at the time it is most needed. A canal would be made from Dargai, with branches running west to Abazai, the head of the parent canal, and south east to the Indus at Pehur and the Kabul river at Jahangira. These branches would practically command all of Peshawar District north of the Swat and Kabul rivers which is not already canal-irrigated— an area of about 600 square miles.
