Well known environment expert Professor Devendra S Bhargava is of the opinion that the severe tragedy which occurred in Uttarakhand in June this year could have easily been avoided if the Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF) had its decision makers from civil engineering, hydrology, hydraulics, environmental engineering and geology backgrounds.
“However, there are hardly any such experts in the said ministry in which the entire decision making command is with the pseudo-environmentalists having zero knowledge of hydraulics without which no environmental or water-resource project can ever be planned, executed or investigated”, he told “The Pioneer” here today.
Prof Bhargava says that unfortunately, the real environmental engineers are considered outcastes in the MOEF. “The point is proved from the factual failure of Ganga cleaning in 28 years despite MOEF’s efforts at all levels.
“Uttarakhand has been in controversy for over a decade due to the construction of several dams on the Ganga River and its various upland tributaries in the Himalayan region. These numerous small and big dams were constructed in great hurry but without proper hydrological, geological, hydraulics related investigations including geological mappings and expected implications,” says this expert.
He believes that the construction of dams alters the flow regime of the rivers and if a thirsty aquifer (water-bearing strata of the earth in which water is contained and flows like in a river, such as, mythologically, the underground Saraswati river which meets the Ganga-Yamuna rivers at Allahabad) is encountered in the process of dam construction then most river water gets lost in such aquifers.
The river water is manifested when the outflow from the dam becomes much less than the water inflow into the dam. This may also result in river diversion situations. Apart from these the flow regimes and catchment areas of the region gets severely disturbed, and thus when heavy rains occur, the floods enter in areas which no one had even visualized.
This is what had happened in Uttarakhand when heavy rains coupled with cloud-bursts and huge quantities of groundwater released from water saturated aquifers caused severe flood fury. Thousands of pilgrims visiting Kedarnath and other holy shrines were washed away or buried in the debris brought in by the flood-waters and in land-slides but lakhs got stranded for weeks with nowhere to go, nothing to eat or drink.
Unfortunately, rescue operations started late and most operations got concentrated in the Hemkund area while the largest chunk of pilgrims were at Kedarnath and it’s downsides. Prof. Bhargava has taught at several Insttutions including BITS Pilani, Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kanpur and Asian Institute of Technology Bangkok.
He retired as Professor (Environment) from Roorkee University (now an IIT). He has authored 470 researh papers and received 32 academic awards including the UGC's most prestigious Swami Pranavananda award as well as the Institution of Engineers India's National Design award in Environmental Engineering. He has been researching various aspects of Ganga for the last 35 years.