The charter of duties assigned to WAPDA at the time of its inception in 1958 makes the organization responsible for reclamation to land lost to water logging and salinity which had been afflicting the fertile plans for over a century and had reached the alarming state of over a hundred thousand acres of good land turning to salt covered expanses and in waterlogged land completely or partially incapable of bearing any growth or vegetation. By the middle of this century millions of productive acres had been affected to various degrees of intensity, from mild to severe, while the toll was rising too rapidly to urge scientific and systematic control of the disease for reclamation of lost land.

Over the last 40 years of operations WAPDA's strategy has been a two pronged attack on the ailment; symptomatic and curative, the former to provide immediate relief, offsetting the effects of the disease by lowering of underground water table through installation of tubewells, and the latter to provide long term solution to the problem by constructing drains, both surface and sub-soil, for creating drainage of saline affluent out of harms way, the overall agenda included improvement of farm practices to facilitate surface drainage and block seepage of water to raise underground water level. So far 57 salinity control and reclamation projects (SCARPS) and drainage projects have been completed to cover an area of about 19 million acres throughout the country with the help of more than 15 thousand fresh and saline groundwater tubewells, over 11 thousand kilometers long surface drains and 7,600 kilometers of tile drains at a total cost of Rs.28 billion.

Present Works:

(a) Irrigation

Two major canal projects are have been completed substantially.

• Chashma Right Bank Canal (Khyber Pakhtunkhwa & Punjab), costing Rs.1`3.8 billion.
• Pehur High Level Canal (Khyber Pakhtunkhwa) costing Rs.6.5 billion.

Eleven drainage projects at total cost of Rs.57,232 million to reclaim 4.80 million acres area are under various stages of construction. The core projects are Fordwah Eastern Sadiqia in Punjab, LBOd and RBOD in Sindh and Swabi SCARP in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.