Pakistan's Largest Dam - Tarbela

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Pakistan's Largest Dam - Tarbela

The world's largest earth-filled dam on one of the world's most important rivers - the Indus - is 103 km from Islamabad. The dam was completed in 1976 at a cost of Rs.18.5 billion. Over 15,000 Pakistani and 800 foreign workers and engineers worked during its construction. It is the biggest hydral power station in Pakistan having a capacity of generating 3,478 MW of electricity.

Its reservoir is 97 km long with a depth of 137 meters while total area of the lake is 260sq.km. With a reservoir capacity of 13,690,000,000 cubic m, the dam is 143 m high and 2,743 m wide at its crest. Permits are required to visit the Dam.

Because the source of the Indus River is glacial melt water from the Himalayas, the river carries huge amounts of sediment. The annual suspended sediment load is about 430 million tons per year. This means that, over time, the reservoir will fill. The useful life of the dam and reservoir was estimated to be somewhere around fifty years, since the dam's completion in 1976, meaning that the reservoir would have been full of sediment by 2030.

However, sedimentation has been much lower than predicted, and it is now estimated that the useful lifespan of the dam will be 85 years, to about 2060.