A RUDE REMINDER
A devastating flash flood in the Himalayan state highlights the urgent need to protect the region’s fragile environment and review unbridled development activity
A flash flood highlights the need to protect the region’s fragile ecology
The disaster that unfolded on February 7 in the higher reaches of Uttarakhand after a portion of a ‘hanging glacier’ on the slopes of Nanda Devi broke off and triggered flash floods strikes yet another environmental alarm bell for India’s Himalayan regions. The glacial collapse, near Raini village above Joshimath in the state’s Chamoli district, sent a wall of water and debris down the Dhauliganga and Rishiganga tributaries of the Alaknanda river, causing significant destruction along the route, including damage to major hydropower projects. At least 32 people are dead and over 170 are reported missing. The devastation evoked memories of the June 2013 flash floods in the state, caused by a cloudburst near the Kedarnath shrine, which left nearly 700 dead. By afternoon, though, such fears receded as the gates of a downstream dam in Srinagar, in Pauri Garhwal, were opened while the gates of the Tehri Dam were shut to allow passage of the surging waters of the Alaknanda into the Ganga at the confluence in Devprayag. The f loods wrecked NTPC’s Tapovan Vishnugad 520 MW hydel project and wiped out the under-construction Rishiganga mini-hydel project, roads, bridges as well as homes. A majority of those missing are feared stuck in tunnels at these two power projects. Reports also suggest major damage to THDC India’s 444 MW Pipalkoti and the Jaypee Group’s 400 MW Vishnuprayag hydropower projects. Teams of the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF), army, air force and state agencies are engaged in rescue and evacuation.
WHAT CAUSED IT?
There is no clarity yet on what caused the disaster. Both the Centre and the Uttarakhand government have put experts on the job. They include scientists from the Geological Survey of India. H.C. Nainwal, a noted glaciologist at the Hemvati Nandan Bahuguna Garhwal University in Srinagar, says there is no identified glacial lake in the affected region. “We need to study where the water came from,” he says. According to Mohd Farooq Azam, assistant professor with the glaciology and hydrology department of IIT-Indore, “Glacial bursts are very rare. Satellite and Google Earth images do not show any glacial lake, but there is possibility of water pockets—lakes inside glaciers—in the region. A water pocket may have erupted, leading to this event. But we need further analysis of weather and other data to arrive at a conclusion.” The meteorological department had reported sunny weather for February 6-7 around the disaster site. Though avalanches are common in the Himalayas,
such an occurrence alone is unlikely to have caused the sudden and alarming rise in water levels in Alaknanda’s tributaries. Tweets by Dan Shugar, associate professor with the department of geosciences at Canada’s University of Calgary—featuring satellite images captured before and after the catastrophe—suggest a portion of the glacier may have fallen after it was struck by a massive rockslide.
THE COST OF DEVELOPMENT
While it’s too early to draw conclusions, some experts are blaming the tragedy on global warming and the continuing ecological degradation of Uttarakhand. The incident has put the spotlight back on unrestrained development work in the upper regions of the state, including the environs of Nanda Devi, Badrinath and Kedarnath. The topography of these areas makes rivers all the more prone to flash floods, whether triggered by construction activity or climate change. Studies, including one by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), have warned that the temperature profile of ice in these regions is rising. It is -2 ˚C now, as against a temperature range of -20 ˚C to -6 ˚C at one time, making the ice highly susceptible to melting.
Clearly, no lessons seem to have been learnt from the 2013 floods in Uttarakhand, which claimed hundreds of lives and destroyed an estimated 2,000 homes, 1,300 roads and 150 bridges. The following year, the Uttarakhand government had developed an action plan on climate change with inputs from UNDP, but today there appears to be little evidence of action on the ground.
Uttarakhand is an ecologically fragile state, with 71 per cent of its area under forests. The past decade has seen successive governments in the state struggle to balance ecological realities with development requirements—the result being the rampant damming of rivers to generate hydropower, mushrooming of settlements on river banks, and the drilling and tunneling of mountains to expand the road network.
Both the Union and Uttarakhand government, for instance, are aggressively pushing for completion of the 816 km Char Dham Highway, connecting the pilgrimage centres of Kedarnath, Badrinath, Yamunotri and Gangotri. The state authorities and NHAI (National Highways Authority of India) are at loggerheads with the National Green Tribunal (NGT) for clearances. The NGT wants the width of the under-construction road restricted to 5.5 metres (it’s 10 metres now) to minimise the damage caused to the forests and mountains. But with 537 km of road length already completed, there is only a dim chance of any change in the original plan. Mallika Bhanot, who works with the Uttarkashi-based citizens’ forum Ganga Ahvaan and monitors the Bhagirathi eco-sensitive zone, says the Char Dham Highway construction is focusing on maximising slopecutting in the shortest possible time. “Tall slopes—often inclined more than 45 degrees and as high as 60-70 metres—have been cut without considering the vulnerability of the local geological features. It’s a high-risk approach that has triggered several major landslides.” In recent years, the hill states have been making major efforts to exploit their water resources for power generation. Some 200 large, medium and small hydro projects are in various phases of development in Uttarakhand. Such projects consume vast quantities of concrete, a material known to generate heat, raising temperatures and destabilising snowfields and glaciers in the vicinity. Manju Menon, senior fellow at the Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi, says engineering projects executed in the upper regions of Uttarakhand have made the mountains more fragile. “A better understanding of the ecology will not only help save the mountains but also guide investors on the best technology to be used for their projects,” she says. In a 2016 affidavit in the Supreme Court, the then Union ministry of water resources, river development and Ganga rejuvenation said that several mountainous areas, including the higher reaches of Uttarakhand, should be left untouched by hydropower projects. But the environment and power ministries took a contrarian view. Uttarakhand cites its own compulsions. The state generates about 3.8 GW of electricity and needs to buy additional power from the national grid. The state government aims to more than double its power generation capacity over the next few years. In June 2018, the Uttarakhand High Court had stalled all hydropower projects in the state over improper disposal of debris along the rivers. The Supreme Court, in August 2020, permitted the projects to proceed, provided the debris was disposed of without ruining the rivers. While the precise mechanism that triggered the latest calamity remains unknown for the moment, we do know that the Hindu Kush-Himalayan region has over 8,000 glacial lakes, of which 200 are classified dangerous. Uttarakhand alone has some 1,000 glacial lakes. The glacial collapse in Chamoli will not be the last such tragedy unless India’s hill states take credible action to sync their development models with the environment, begin round-the-clock assessment of the Himalayas and their delicate ecology, and deploy more scientific methods to map the effects of climate change.