More storage facilities should come up in Uttarakhand to store water and reduce floods in the State, according to a report of the committee, which was set up by the Ministry of Water Resources (MoWR), in the wake of the mid-June floods.
In July, the Committee members visited the affected sites in the State to assess the causes of the disaster. The report was finalised in October.
The Committee included members from the Ganga Flood Control Commission (GFCC), an organisation set up by the government of India for dealing with flood problems in the Ganga basin, the Central Water Commission (CWC), which provides flood forecast service for three stations in Uttarakhand, the India Meteorological Department (IMD), and the MoWR.
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One of the Committee’s findings was: “It is evident that the existence of large storage in the Tehri dam was helpful in absorbing a substantial amount of flow in the Bhagirathi river. The flood situation …. could have been worse in the absence of the Tehri dam.”
Based on this, the report suggests that “action for construction of large storages, wherever feasible, on the Alaknanda river, the Mandakini river, and the Pindar river, which are headstreams of the Ganga, may be taken at the earliest.”
The report further states that “these storages could be operated in a manner as to provide opportunity for absorption of flood in an unfavourable condition. Possibility of storage on tributaries may also be explored.”
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However, the report falls short of providing information regarding the role of the Tehri dam in checking the floods.
In the first week of August this year, around 50 villages above the Tehri dam was cut off because a bridge over the reservoir got completely submerged. As a result, the water level in the Ganga near Haridwar reached just about a metre below the danger level mark of 294 m.
The water from the Ganga entered the villages in Haridwar’s Laksar belt and flooded the agricultural land and houses in the area. People had to flee their homes and take shelter in some government buildings.
The situation was alarming and the residents downstream of the Tehri dam feared a repeat of 2010, when the water level in the dam rose dangerously, threatening villages in the vicinity.
While environmentalists were upfront in their view that breach of environmental norms during dam construction and the mushrooming of such structures aggravated the extent of disaster, the report does not touch upon the issue at all.