Himalayas be dammed: Uttarakhand's cycle of development, disaster

Several hydel projects and the Char Dham highway construction have wrought destruction in Uttarakhand, worsening natural disasters

Five months before a killer flash flood washed away more than 200 people along with two hydropower projects in Uttarakhand’s Chamoli district on February 7, the hill state had informed the Supreme Court about the “criticality of hydropower” and “the acute shortage of electricity in the state”.

This appraisal came as the apex court was hearing a petition from GMR Energy Limited, which wanted to restart its 300 MW Alaknanda hydropower project in the Badrinath valley.

On January 21, the matter was listed before a bench presided over by the Chief Justice of India, who posted it for a hearing in June.

With rescue efforts still underway even a week after the massive winter flood, environmental activists are now likely to flag the failure of NTPC’s 520 MW Tapovan-Vishnugad hydro power plant and 13.2 MW Rishiganga project to argue against the lifting of the stay imposed on 24 proposed hydropower projects by the SC in the wake of the 2013 disaster.

Read: The once-prosperous Uttarakhand villages and their long wait for rehabilitation

Till a few years ago, it was a time of boom for hydel projects in the hill state — the birthplace of two of India’s mightiest rivers, the Ganga and the Yamuna. Nearly 70 hydropower projects were approved at one point in time.

Even though some of these projects have now been cancelled, the thirst for “cheaper” hydel power is so intense that the rivers in the higher reaches of Himalayas move from power generation tunnels of one project to the other within a few kilometres.

Take the example of the impacted basin: The waters of Rishiganga flow through the privately-run Rishiganga hydel power project at Raini village barely a kilometre before merging with the Dhauliganga River.

Nine kilometres downstream, the Tapovan-Vishnugad project was being developed by the National Thermal Power Corporation (NTPC) to divert the waters of Dhauliganga to run turbines of a 520 MW hydel power project.

A few kilometres on, the Dhauliganga merges into the Alaknanda at Vishnuprayag, the site of a 400 MW privately-run hydel project that was commissioned in 2006. About 40 km downstream at Pipalkoti, a 444 MW ‘run-of-the-river project’ is under development.

The muck from the Rishiganga and Tapovan has now affected the 400 MW project at Vishnuprayag. Jaiprakash Power Ventures Limited, which built and operated the project here, has stated in a regulatory filing that sudden development of a “force majeure” event had led to the closure of power generation.

Since the Kedarnath floods, some of the proposed hydropower plants have been cancelled, but there are seven big projects that were allowed to be completed. NTPC’s Tapovan-Vishnugad was one of them.

But the lessons of Kedarnath were short-lived. Within three years of the disaster, the Centre came up with its 889 km of highway development scheme in the Himalayas connecting Kedarnath, Badrinath, Gangotri and Yamunotri.

Read: We live with a sense of fear, say villagers from Uttarakhand's Raini

The entire project was divided into 53 segments, each less than 100 km, in order to bypass the environmental impact assessment norms.

Though the project was challenged before the top court, the government went ahead with constructing of the highway — cutting the hills, blasting away rocks and dumping the debris on the hillside and river bed.

Trail of destruction

The whirring of rock drilling machines is a constant companion as one moves upstream along the banks of the Ganga, from Rishikesh to Badrinath.

Rocks cut from the mountains make their way to stone crushers located at several places along the road, which is then used to build the highway. The rest of the 'muck' makes its way to various identified dumping sites in the Ganga valley, some of which rolls down into the rivers.

It is little surprise then that environmentalists have been against the project right from the start.

"Since the project began in 2016, there were nearly 200 landslides on the Char Dham routes and now the developers are seeking extra money to deal with the landslides. Soil erosion in that area is more than three times than the rest of the country,” Hemant Dhyani, one of the members of the Supreme Court-appointed panel to review the project told DH.

Irreversible loss

In its 2020 report, the Supreme Court appointed-high-powered committee on the Char Dham project noted that most of the panel members were deeply disturbed when they saw the massive slope cutting, unmindful of the irreversible loss it was causing to the fragile terrain.

The panel headed by the Himalayan expert Ravi Chopra, director of the People’s Science Institute, Dehradun was divided on the issue of road width, as it entails more hill cutting.

The project currently proposes a 12 metre wide ‘Double Lane with Paved Shoulder’ design, but has no space for the mandated sidewalks and roadside plantations.

The bone of contention was a section in the report which recommended that road width be reduced to 5.5 metres, in accordance with a 2018 circular by the Ministry of Road Transport, with recommendations on roads to be built for hilly terrain.

However, a majority of the panel members and government officials have orchestrated an "alternative" report, leading to a majority and minority report before the Supreme Court.

The waters have been further muddied by the Defence Ministry, which wants at least 7 metre wide roads to move its vehicles to the areas close to the China border.

So the Union Road Ministry, under Nitin Gadkari, amended its own 2018 circular to recommend that “for roads in hilly and mountainous terrain which act as feeder roads to the Indo-China border or are of strategic importance for national security, the carriageway width should be seven metres, with a 1.5-metre paved shoulder on either side.”

The matter is now before the Supreme Court.

Tourism

However, a section of the locals is happy, seeing the Char Dham project as a means of improving their livelihood. “It has come as a boon and has improved access to these parts of the state. It will bring more tourists,” says Pramod Nautiyal, who runs a hotel in Karnaprayag near the confluence of rivers Pindar and Alaknanda.

The project is a myopic way of looking at developing the tourism sector. The high-powered committee report also indicates that the highway would likely lead to the pilgrimage spots well exceeding their carrying capacity of tourists within the next decade.

Despite the two disasters in the same area within seven years, the Uttarakhand government is unlikely to move away from this unsustainable path of development.

“I request everyone not to use this natural disaster as a reason to build an anti-development narrative,” Chief Minister Trivendra Singh Rawat said on February 8. “I reiterate our government’s commitment to developing the hills of Uttarakhand in a sustainable manner and we will leave no stone unturned in ensuring the achievement of this goal."

But the critics remain fiercely sceptical about the project's sustainability. “All it would do is allow SUVs to race at 80-100 km and turn pilgrimage sites into tourist hotspots. It would destroy the environment and trigger many such disasters in future,” says Dhyani.