Demand-driven power generation leads to drastic hourly
fluctuations in water levels in most rivers. At risk are the lives and
livelihood of thousands and the riverine ecology.
Three days after a sudden swell in the Beas washed away 24
students at Thalot in Himachal Pradesh, a couple of media reports have
questioned the irresponsible release of waters from the Larji dam that caused
the tragedy.
Pointing out that the Larji project “authorities had been
releasing excess water in the Beas, almost without prior warning, since Friday”,
The
Indian Express reported that the project suddenly
reduced generation of power on Saturday evening, “presumably because demand had
dipped”.
Around 5:50 pm, warned by the national grid load dispatch centre
via Shimla, the Larji authorities reduced power generation from 138 MW to 64
MW. Next, they decided to open the floodgates at the bottom of the project’s reservoir
which was threatening to flood the Chandigarh-Manali highway near Aut. At 6:15 pm, 50 cubic metres per second (cumecs) of water was released
and within minutes tragedy hit 2.7km downstream.
Shocking, but there is nothing unusual, as media reports
suggest, about these events. The very idea of demand-driven power generation
necessitates sudden release of water and drastic hourly fluctuations in river
flow. And it is happening daily across the country, routinely claiming lives
and jeopardizing livelihoods tied to riverine agriculture, fishing and
cattle-rearing. Only when the lives of engineering students are lost to this
madness do the headline-obsessed media and the nation take note.
There is almost no data in the public domain on water level
fluctuations from existing hydro-electricity projects. But official studies on
a slew of proposed projects, mainly in the northeast, provide a grim picture
that is likely to be true for most hydel projects in north India as well. Even
secondary evidence of manmade disasters, such as the Beas tragedy, is aplenty.
In 2007, Assam Chief
Minister Tarun Gogoi knocked at the External Affairs ministry’s door when release
of water from Bhutan’s Kurichhu dam, without any warning, led to a
“catastrophic flood” that devastated lower Assam in just seven hours. It has
not helped that the project was executed by our own NHPC. Sudden releases from the
reservoir have been causing floods of varying intensity in western Assam every
monsoon since.
Even when it does not lead to major flooding, drastic daily
fluctuation in river flow caused by demand-driven supply of power can throw
life completely off gear. The Lower Subansiri project on the Assam-Arunachal
borders, for example, will hold back water for about 20 hours before releasing
the load for maximum power generation during peak demand hours in the evening. That
means downstream flows in winter will fluctuate from 6 cumecs to 2,560 cumecs. The
river will trickle for 20 hours before swelling with monsoon-like surges for
four hours, every day.
Subansiri is no exception. The 2,700 MW Lower Siang project in
Arunachal Pradesh will cause a daily water level fluctuation of more than 13
feet in winter. As more than 100 proposed dams are to follow the same daily
routine on the Brahmaputra and all its major tributaries, at stake is the
entire local economy that rests on fishing, flood-recession agriculture,
navigation and livestock rearing. And that is not to mention the destruction of
the riverine and wetland ecology.
When the Ranganadi hydel project was commissioned in 2002, large
quantities of water released in the river without any warning swept away many
cattle, and a villager according to unconfirmed reports. Amid sustained
protests, the North Eastern Electric Power Corporation issued a circular in
June 2006, saying, “The gates of Ranganadi diversion dam may require opening
from time to time… the corporation will not take any responsibility for any
loss of life of human, pet animals and property damage…”
Timely and adequate warning before sudden releases of waters may
save lives, but not livelihoods. Going by the experience of Ranganadi and
Subansiri, flow fluctuation deals a death blow to fisheries, driftwood collection,
sand and gravel mining and farming and grazing on riverine islands. Fish that
breed in shallow waters or hibernate along the shorelines are particularly vulnerable.
During my visit last year, local fishermen near Gogamukh claimed
that they spent twice as much time to catch barely half the quantity of fish
they used to get before the dam came up. Sand miners complained that the
Subansiri now brought more silt than sand.
And warning or not, the ecology is a silent and certain
casualty. “These daily floods affect groundnesting birds, amphibians and even
mammals — Bengal Floricans to tigers — that use the chaporis (riverine
islands). Dolphins, on the other hand, will not survive the dry hours,” said
North Lakhimpur-based biologist Lakhi Prasad Hazarika who has documented the
impact of flow fluctuation in the Subansiri.
Yet, no hydel project is required to assess its downstream
impact beyond 10 km or the distance from dam to powerhouse. So, more than 150
projects are coming up in Arunachal Pradesh alone. The other Himalayan states
of Sikkim and Himachal Pradesh are not lagging far behind. And the pledge to
save the Ganga stands firm on the foundation of nearly 600 dams planned on the
river and its tributaries.
“Every summer, I watched in frustration as nesting birds along
the Ganga were swept way when ACs were switched on en masse in Delhi,” rues a
researcher who used to work with a government organization in Uttarakhand. “Do
we care either about the people or agriculture or the birds and animals that live
along these rivers? India’s rivers sustained human civilizations and wildlife
populations for thousands of years and in one century, we are all set to
destroy it completely.”
Tragedies like last year’s floods in Uttarakahnd or last week’s drowning
in Himachal Pradesh only offer a glimpse of the human cost that such policy
madness will eventually extract. A customary probe has been ordered and three
Larji officials have been suspended. But will the new government dare purge the
disease rather than merely treat the symptoms? Implementing the recommendations
made by the MoEF’s expert body in its April 2014 report on Uttarakhand floods can be a good starting point.
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