Contrary to the general perception, the rain and snowfall in Himachal Pradesh has actually registered an increase over the past few years.
Allying apprehensions of water and power shortage, this and much more was claimed on Friday by the Bhakra Beas Management Board (BBMB) on the basis of a study being carried out by its climate change cell in the hill state.
BBMB chairman DK Sharma said that the study on the effect of climate change was in its initial stages and data was yet to be compiled. But, preliminary indications were that the rain and snow fall had increased. As such the apprehensions of power shortage due to falling water levels were ill-founded.
At the same time he claimed that the BBMB would be “able to fulfill farmers’ demand”. BBMB chief maintained that during the previous year, the state of Punjab and Haryana were given “more than its share” of water from the BBMB,
As the BBMB was “working on” the hill state to begin with, the project would be extended to the lower areas of Punjab, Haryana and Rajasthan in future.
“It cannot be said right now what exactly would be the effect of climate change but as the temperature is rising, our study in Himachal pointed out that the rainfall and snowfall in increasing thereby meaning that water would not be less in the coming future,” said Sharma.
“Climate change is a vast subject, and we have just made a humble beginning towards this direction by constituting the climate change cell. None of our engineer has any information on this subject. But, now we have created this Cell by internal re-arrangement of posts to study the effect of changing climate on the catchments and to make projections of future scenario,” said Sharma.
He pointed that the Sutlej, Beas and Ravi rivers were being monitored by the sub-stations at all catchment areas, and the Cell has been able to make projections of 2020 with every 10-year gap till 2080.
“We are working on this and later this project would be extended to the lower areas of Punjab, Haryana, and Rajasthan to study how the rainfall will be affected with climate change…We are likely to complete the study by this year,” said Sharma.
Sharma stressed that the ability of BBMB projects and reservoirs, to meet future irrigation and hydropower requirements of partner states will depend on future inflows into these reservoirs, which will be affected by the climate changes which have an effect on long term rainfall and temperature patterns which in turn will determine river runoffs.
“It is utmost necessary to understand the effects of climate change on our reservoir inflows. And these studies will be very beneficial in ascertaining long term availability of water from BBMB reservoirs and will also help policy makers to confidently plan future land usage, cropping patterns, inundation scenarios, among other things,” he said.
Making a contribution towards saving environment, the BBMB is also making its contribution by carrying out massive plantation drives and setting up a 27-acre Herbal Garden at Nangal.
“We have also planted about 17,000 trees in a unique project of BBMB colonies and substations in all partners states wherein people have been given responsibility to monitor the trees and if any trees dies, they bring it to the notice of concerned officer following which it was replanted,” he said adding that with this, the tress have registered a survival rate of over 80 percent.