Governance Now, July 16-31
IIT-Roorkee’s study is a recipe for disaster. Instead of assessing the danger to Ganga’s tributaries from existing hydro-power projects it bats for more
The first ever cumulative impact assessment (CIA) study of hydro-power projects being built on Bhagirathi and Alaknanda, two tributaries of the Ganga, has come as a big disappointment.
Carried out by the Alternate Hydro Energy Centre (AHEC) of IIT-Roorkee, which submitted its report to the ministry of environment and forests (MoEF) recently, the study ignores the very raison d’être of its endeavour – assess cumulative impact of 70 hydro-power projects (HPs)commissioned or in various stages of development (three of which were scrapped last year) on these rivers, their surrounding ecosystems and human habitations along the rivers. Of the 70, 54 are run-of-the-river (ROR) and the rest storage-based (dams) projects.
The task was onerous and yet important to make sure the drive to harness hydro-power doesn’t kill the rivers and the life-sustaining environment they build around them. In fact, it was prompted by a supreme court order of 2009 to allay such fears and came in the wake of scrapping three major HPs – at Loharinag Pala, Pala Maneri and Bhaironghati on Bhagirathi.
But the findings not only fail to live up to the expectations, they do a reverse swing and advocate more such projects.
Here are some of the key issues involved in the study, the findings and what’s wrong with these findings.
* Both Bhagirathi and Alaknanda originate from glaciers and so do several of their tributaries. The report says glaciers are in much higher altitudes, upstream and distant to be affected by the HPs.
Right, but it doesn’t take into consideration the crucial fact that 75 percent of Himalayan glaciers are retreating at an annual rate of 3.75 percent. This was revealed in the “most detailed” satellite imagery based study, ‘Snow and glaciers of the Himalayas’, carried out jointly by the MoEF and the department of space. Though this particular report was released in June this year, similar findings have been published in the past too.
The study doesn’t take into consideration how much less water will flow in over the
next five, 10 or 15 years and how that would impact the existing hydro-power projects. Prudence demands that such information are taken into consideration while planning or assessing projects.
* A dam (storage-based project) stops the flow and ‘submerges’ a portion of the river, while a RoR project diverts a part of it. Both “affect” the river adversely, diversion being more so. The report says “the river becomes dry in the diverted stretch” which could be “very long” and “fatal to aquatic life”.
It also calculates that the existing HPs would “affect” 47.3 percent of Bhagirathi and its tributaries and 43.9 percent of Alaknanda and its tributaries. But it doesn’t assess what the cumulative impact of such changes would be on the rivers and their tributaries. On the contrary, it advocates fixing a “threshold” at 70 percent, meaning thereby that a river and its tributaries may be allowed to be affected by way of ‘submergence’ and ‘diversion’ up to 70 percent of its length.
Shockingly, the study doesn’t say on what basis this threshold has been arrived at. And while admitting that 70.71 percent of Bhagirathi river is getting affected (31 percent diverted, 39 percent submerged), instead of asking for a moratorium on more projects on this river, it seeks revival of the Loharinag Pala and other projects on the same river which were scrapped last year.
* The study recognises the fact that all HPs adversely impact the river and its aquatic life and hence it should get a breathing space between the dams/barrages “so that the river is given an opportunity to recuperate its ecological environment”. But what should this breathing space be or whether adequate breathing space has been provided in the existing projects has not been spelt out.
* The study recognises that HPs restrict flow of the rivers and that to keep the rivers and their ecosystems in good health and sustain human livelihood and wellbeing certain quantity of water should “always flow in the rivers”. It describes this flow as “environmental flow” but bases its calculations on the “minimum flow” required, ignoring needs and expectations of people living on the banks, a flow required to help the flora and fauna to prosper and flourish, and not just survive and the fact that floods too play important ecological functions.
While proposing a minimum flow, the report acknowledges that this may reduce power generation and “such reduction may make several schemes unviable, especially small scale hydropower schemes”. Yet, it doesn’t say if we should scrap projects to prevent this. On the contrary it concludes that hydro-power can be harnessed with environmental sustainability “provided certain measures are taken”. What these measures are, we are not told.
This part of the study suffers from “a major handicap” as “measured river cross sections and velocity of flows were available at limited locations”. It goes on to say that the desired “building block method” which should be applied to arrive at the right environmental flow “requires much more data, time and manpower and other resources and therefore, could not be applied in this study”.
* The study registers negative changes in water quality but gives a thumbs-up saying that the impact is well within the limits of environmental sustainability. This assessment is based on individual case studies, rather than the combined impact of a series of projects. Experts point out that the thumbs-up is based on central pollution control board’s “use-based” classification of water which may be okay to determine potability of water drawn from a tube well but not for determining water quality of a natural river.
* The study admits that Bhagirathi and Alaknanda river basins are rich in biodiversity “designated as sensitive habitats” with “high conservation significance”. It also says that construction of reservoirs prevents migration of aquatic life and changes the domain of flowing water (river) to a standing water (lake) domain. This change brings about “significant changes in physicochemical characteristics affecting the ecological parameters”.
But it goes on to conclude: “So far, we don’t have any study of changes in aquatic life from river to reservoir. Thus, at present it is not possible to give any firm assessment on the impact of HPs on biodiversity of Alaknanda and Bhagirathi.” But wasn’t that the purpose of the study?
It devotes considerable space to impact on fish, particularly the famed golden mahseer and snow trout that so characterise these rivers by observing that the fish “require an uninterrupted riverine habitat as well as floodplains for their breeding”, which dams and tunnels disrupt. And by way of solution, it says “fish passes” of various kinds be used. But not a word has been said about the efficacy of these passes and instances where such methods have been used successfully to make a convincing argument.
The only worthwhile suggestion the report makes is that no more HPs should be set up on the tributaries of Bhagirathi and Alaknanda. It says: “These streams have been identified as Nayar, Birhi Ganga, Bhyunder Ganga, Balganga and Asiganga which should not be exploited further as these are the lifelines of the main ecosystem of Alaknanda and Bhagirathi rivers”.
* The study points out that tunneling work for ROR projects damage springs and other underground water channels. This alters water availability and affects local population. But in a typical bureaucratic exercise, it says such blockages would lead to springs finding alternate routes and that the reservoirs being built in other projects would recharge ground water to conclude that the effect will be localised and the cumulative impact will be negligible. And then it goes on to contradict itself: “In the absence of relevant groundwater in the project scenario it may be difficult (or improper) to conclude with confidence on the impact on construction of HPs on the availability of drinking water sources to the population in the project area”.
* Photographs carried in the report tell a harrowing tale of recklessness. Huge piles of muck, generated from excavation work, have been dumped in the river beds, skirting the water flow and in forested areas of hills destroying vegetation. Instead of expressing anxiety and asking for immediate remedial action to prevent damage to the river and forests, it merely advises that suitable dumping ground may be found.
Worse, it points out that afforestation and catchment area treatment has not started for any of the HPs and that post construction impact data are not available. Yet, it concludes that “the problems generated during the construction will die out automatically”.
* The study is dotted with lamentations about lack of data and relevant information. The chapter on ‘recommendations’ begins with this gem: “In view of the fact that the field of cumulative impact assessment (CIA) is new and is being introduced for the first time in India, there are many gaps in the knowledge necessary to undertake CIA with the desired degree of precision, particularly in the Himalayan region where the database is weaker than that in the rest of the country. It is therefore necessary that a major programme of research and development should
be drawn and implemented as early as possible.”
Bharat Jhunjhunwala, former professor of IIM-Bangalore whose petition to the central empowered committee led to the supreme court ordering this study in 2009, says the basic mistake of the study is that sustainable development of a single project has been passed off as a cumulative study.
He goes on to add that AHEC has failed to consider several aspects: loss of forests and biodiversity, trapping of sediments in reservoirs, methane emissions from reservoir, impact on health due to mosquito breeding in reservoirs and so on.
In fact, when IIT Roorkee was given the task by the MoEF, he had objected to the choice of both the organisation and its director Arun Kumar, saying that their primary competence was in engineering and design of small hydropower projects, rather than environmental studies.
He would have preferred if the task had been given to National Environmental Engineering Research Institute, Wildlife Institution of India or Forest Research Institute.
Himanshu Thakkar, an expert on water management issues, dismisses the report as “pathetic” and has written to environment minister Jairam Ramesh to junk it. He writes: “We find that the report has not really done cumulative impact assessment, has shown bias in favour of hydropower projects, which is inappropriate for the task at hand, has given many unfounded conclusions and recommendations, has made factually wrong assertions and has done far from objective assessment of the performance of the projects. The report also has not looked at the poor quality of EIAs-EMPs done for these projects and almost universal noncompliance of environment norms in the implementation of these projects. In short, the shoddy report is a lost opportunity and needs to be rejected, even while following up on some of the half-hearted recommendations.”
He is particularly disturbed with the prescription of letting 70 percent of the river be affected. He says submergence and diversion kills a river and “to allow killing of 70 percent of a river is nonsense”.
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