Committee on Char Dham project divided over green impact
nDEHRADUN: Members of a 26-member high-power committee formed by the Supreme Court last year to determine the impact of the 826km on Himalayan valleys have submitted two separate reports, revealing differences within the panel.
A group led by the panel’s chairman Ravi Chopra and four others has listed potential adverse environmental and social life impacts of the proposed road, including environmental damage such as landslides, loss of forests, blocking of Himalayan streams, and threat to wildlife.
At the same time, a group of 21 members says the damage can be minimised.
Both groups submitted their reports last week to the ministry of environment and forests, committee members said.
The proposed all-weather road will connect the four shrines of Uttarakhand -- Kedarnath, Badrinath, Gangotri and Yamunotri. The foundation stone for the project was laid by PM Narendra Modi in December 2016. According to officials in the state government, 350km of the road has been constructed so far under the project. The main point of contention is the width of the road.
The report of Chopra and the others, a copy of which is with HT, says, “…environmentally less harmful approaches to road widening like the use of valley side filling, provisioning of tunnels, viaducts and snow galleries takwhich ing due cognizance of terrain fragility, ecological sensitivity and social concerns have received little attention...”. It goes on to list the adverse environmental impact of a 12-metre-wide road against an 8-metre-wide one.
The report points out that the occurrence of landslides has been enhanced by vertical or near-vertical cuts without sufficient slope vulnerability analysis in the fragile Himalayas. “On National Highway 125 (Champawat-tanakpur), 102 out of 174 fresh cut slopes were landslide-prone; 44 slope failures had taken place by mid-december 2019. In the first four months of 2020, there were 11 slope failures, almost one a week,” adds the report.
Listing more environmental damage, the report stresses that a bypass alignment proposed at Lohaghat (in Champawat district) “will severely impact the deodar and oak forests of Kali village Van Panchayat. Similarly, the proposed alignments for Champawat and Pithoragarh town bypasses under the project will also lead to felling of precious deodar trees in local forests.”
Other damage, according to the report ,include blocking of Himalayan streams due to improper dumping of muck, heavy dust and traffic pollution and impact on terrestrial and aquatic fauna and flora.
But a senior member of the majority group said the damage can be, and is being, mitigated. “It is obvious that more trees will be cut if a wider road is built, but we are taking precautions for environmental damages. We have made recommendation regarding the deposition of muck in designated sites and protecting it from flowing into water bodies. Along with this, plantation of tree saplings has been recommended,” added this person who asked not to be named.
He also pointed out that a wider road would be safer.
Another senior member of the majority group brought in the China angle, with the road also helping India move troops and supplies to border areas. “We will not deviate from the report because this road has strategic importance in terms of Indochina relations. The committee would rather concentrate on mitigating and minimizing environmental damages,” he said.
In August last year, the SC ordered the formation of an 11-member committee to “consider the cumulative and independent impact of the Char Dham project on the Himalayan valleys…” A bench of justices Rohinton Fali Nariman and Surya Kant modified the National Green Tribunal’s September 26, 2018 order by constituting the committee.