For the last decade or so, a pliable political leadership, in collusion with the corporate-contractor lobby, has thrown most conservation norms to the wind in the name of promoting ‘development'
It was waiting to happen. The Government has been planning it since 1960s. No sane advice of environmentalists, activists or religious leaders was heard. Uttarakhand is still sitting on a powder keg. The losses and the cost of rebuilding the roads and infrastructure, the Uttarakhand Government estimates, are around Rs21,000 crore. That is the package the State Government has sought from the Centre. The State has lost over 2,000 lives, several thousands heads of cattle, livelihood of lakhs, 1,000km of roads, about 300 bridges, thousands of private and Government houses and many other infrastructure. Not all losses can be estimated in terms of money. This estimated package would be only a fraction of the cost the State is planning to invest in more ‘planned development’.
Tehri dam alone had cost about Rs10,000 crore. In all, 244 hydel projects of various sizes are planned to be constructed in the State. Some of these are already on stream. Others are coming up. The Pancheswar dam, being planned in Tanakpur, is likely to be bigger than Tehri and the biggest in India. Does that mean more disasters are awaiting the regionIJ Should we really have damsIJ These hold water during summer, keeping people in its riparian area thirsty and submerge them during rains as these cannot hold on to the excess water. Dams damn the fate of the common man and fills the pockets of rich be it the power lobbies or the industry mafia.
The June 18 cloudburst has been the worst since the 1978 Alaknanda tragedy. Then it was caused by a large landslide which blocked the flow of the river, and heavy rains led to flash floods in a 300km region up to Hardwar. In fact, the statement of Tehri Hydropower Development Corporation a day after the June 18 disaster indicates that the worst is yet to be averted. The THDC said that it had to withhold 2.5 lakh cusecs of water that poured in the dam. It released only 17.6 thousand cusecs. Had it all been released, the townships of Rishikesh and Hardwar would have been wiped off, a THDC official said. It does not mean the danger has passed over.
The Tehri dam, facing high siltation, does not have the capacity to withhold that huge body of water. It would be releasing it in the coming days causing flash floods once again. If it does not, it could lead to the rupture of the dam, if not now, sometime later — maybe it’ll be a worse recurrence of the 1978 tragedy. A cloudburst had swept away bridges and a large chunk of the Gangotri national highway in 2012 as well as in Rudraprayag and Chamoli districts. In 2010, also a similar flooding had occurred in the region. The phenomenon, according to a United Nations Development Programme and European Commission joint study in the Sutlej basin in Himachal Pradesh, an adjacent region, is repeating.
The study revealed that “glacial lake outburst floods” has been occurring “quite regularly”. Notable incidents occurred in 1997, 2000 and 2005 in the Sutlej basin and in 1970 and 1978 in the Alaknanda and the Bhagirathi basins. The Pong Dam too was severely hit, roads were damaged and habitation and scores of bridges built decades back were destroyed. Incidents of GlOF have been reported in Sikkim, ladakh, Jammu & Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh and Arunachal Pradesh.
Environmentalists warn that a delicate ecological balance in the area has been gravely imperilled and say that up to 26km of riverbeds along the Alaknanda and the Bhagirathi have begun to dry up. In the case of the Alaknanda, the tragedy unfolded soon after the Uttarakhand Government cleared the construction of a 12km-long tunnel and a four-storeyed hydro-electric project in Chamoli about two years ago. Apparently, the explosives used to build the project in the nearby river area and the debris of the construction material played a major role drying up of the riverbed. “This is killing the flora and fauna of the region”, says Dehradun-based senior scientist N Ravi Chopra, who conducted a detailed research on the major causes of the drying up of Alaknanda and Bhagirathi riverbeds.
The swelling of the Alaknanda river on June 18 is attributed to this and the Vishnuprayag dam. It has changed the local topography on the road to Badarinath. The Comptroller and Auditor General, in a severe indictment of the Uttarakhand regime, said it was pushing the State towards a major environmental catastrophe by following a highly ambitious hydropower policy. In a report titled, ‘Performance Audit of Hydropower Development Through Private Sector Participation’, the CAG substantiated the allegations made by non-Governmental organisations and project-affected people that the Government had overlooked environmental concerns.
During the last 12 years, a pliable political leadership in collusion with the corporate-contractor lobby has thrown most norms to the wind in the name of ‘development’. The people are now paying the price for the folly of our short-sighted policy-makers.