The government has decided to declare the Ganga a national river, following campaigns from several quarters to preserve its cultural and religious significance. A High Powered Ganga River Basin Authority, to be chaired by the prime minister, will be set up as an empowered planning, implementing and monitoring authority for the river. The Ministry of Environment and Forests, or MOEF, has decided to conduct a basin-wide pilot study of the ecological impact of hydel projects coming up on the Ganga.

The events were set into motion by a letter written by Congress chairperson Sonia Gandhi to Union water resources minister Saifuddin Soz in mid-August. The letter was forwarded to MOEF, which called a n inter-ministerial meeting in September. The decision to carry out the pilot study was taken at the meeting attended by representatives of water resources and power ministries, Central Water Commission, Central Electricity Authority and the National Thermal Power Corporation (ntpc).

The study will be conducted from Dharasu to Gangotri lying in the stretch of the Ganga’s tributary Bhagirathi in Uttarakhand. It will help in the planning of hydropower projects and maintaining adequate water flow in the river for its ecological health. IIT Roorkee and G B Pant Institute of Himalayan Environment and Development, Almora, have bee asked to submit proposals for conducting the study.

Projects coming up on the Ganga’s tributaries, the Bhagirathi and the Alaknanda, are planned in such a way that the tunnel of one ends only a small distance before the reservoir of the next one. This will leave no patch of the river to flow freely (see ‘Myth of Power’, Down To Earth, September 1-15, 2008).

Another committee was set up in July by ntpc on the power ministry’s directions to look into the minimum flow required in the Bhagirathi to maintain its ecological health—this is called environmental flow—and to find out the populations of fish and other species around the Loharinag Pala dam and its impact on them. Two projects upstream of Uttarkashi, Bhairon Ghati and Pala Maneri, were stalled after G D Agarwal, former member secretary of the Central Pollution Control Board, went on hunger strike in June. But work on ntpc’s Loharinag Pala project is under way.

The study on environmental flow , done by the National Institute of Hydrology (nih), Roorkee on behalf of ntpc, concluded that a flow of at least 16 cubic metre per second (cumecs) needed to be maintained at the dam site.

“But ntpc’s proposal said only three cumecs will be maintained. We have asked the nih team for clarifications. Only then the final decision (on letting the dam function) will be take,”

said Rajendra Singh, member of the committee. moef recommends a minimum flow of a little less that one cumec, while the Bhagirathi requires 13 cumecs of flow throughout the year to maintain its Class A status. The International Water Management Institute defines a Class A river as one whose water needs little treatment for drinking.

New study, just hogwash?

Environmentalists have criticized the pilot study on grounds that moef will only be repeating what the earlier committee has undertaken. Vimal Bhai head of Matu People’s Organization, an environmental group active in Uttarakhand, said,

“The new study is hogwash. More than a year ago, the National Environment Appellate Authority had told moef to set up a monitoring committee to oversee Loharinag Pala project. The ministry has not done so. When asked it cited lack of staff as the reason. When it could not monitor one project, how can we trust it on this study, which is for the entire stretch? And the construction is not even being stopped. What will they study once the dams are already there.”

An MOEF official, who attended the inter-ministerial meeting, told Down To Earth, that the Uttarakhand government was “playing hide and seek and might restart the projects once the elections are over”.

	Hydroelectric projects in Alaknanda and Bhagirathi river basins

While going up the meandering road from Tehri to the holy town Gangotri during the thick of monsoon, the Bhagirathi appeared to get uneasily quieter with each hairpin bend; until Chinyali Sor village near Dharasu, 45 km from new Tehri town. The Tehri reservoir ends in the village. The river thereafter springs back to life and the roar of the gushing waters fills up the valleys. But the landscape gradually changes. Some of the mountains are bare and dotted along the road, every 500 metres, are graffiti, posters and signboards, giving out ominous messages. “Blasting Site” in bold, “Bandh Ganga ki hatya hai” (dams will kill the Ganga) and “Ganga ko aviral behne do” (let the Ganga flow unobstructed) are most common along this main stretch of pilgrim route where devotees go to pay their respects to Goddess Ganga, believed to be the daughter of heaven who came down on Earth through the matter locks of lord Shiva.

That apart, the river is fast becoming a favourite destination for hydroelectric projects, several of which are coming up on the Bhagirathi and Alaknanda basins (see map), tributaries of the Ganga river. The highest of them, Bhairon Ghati, is 27 km from the Gangotri glacier. The Uttarakhand government claims it needs the projects. “We do not have many resources except the rivers. Power from these rivers is the only source of revenue for the state. Besides, we can also control floods and have water for irrigation round the year,” said Yogendra Prasad, chairperson of Uttarakhand Jal Vidyut Nigam Limited (ujvnl) and adviser to the chief minister. Fifty five hydropower projects are in different phases of construction and planning. The 162 km stretch of the river from Gangotri to Devprayag will have 11 big dams while the 145 km stretch of Alaknanda from Badrinath to Devprayag will have more than nine big dams apart from several other small projects.

But things came to a head in June this year when G D Agarwal, former member secretary of the Central Pollution Control Board, sat on a nine-day fast. His demand was that no hydropower projects should come up on the 125-km stretch between Uttarkashi and Gangotri. He contended that it would affect the flow of the river and impact its purity. “Run of the river dams are the ones where water will be stored and released periodically through tunnels at locations on which the powerhouse will be built. If this goes on in a series, over long stretches there will be no flow in the channel,” says Agarwal. Following the protest, the state stalled two projects, Pala Maneri and Bhairon Ghati. The Union Ministry of Power has set up a committee to look into the questions raised by Agarwal. In response, B C Khanduri, chief minister of Uttarakhand, is reported to have said that “the state respects Agarwal’s sentiments and that he should also understand the state’s energy requirements”.

According to Anupam Mishra, environmentalist with Gandhi Peace Foundation,

“Engineers feel that a river meeting into the sea without being of use for irrigation or power is a waste of the water in it. If we disrupt the natural flow of a river, it can create havoc. Merging into the river prevents large quantity of saline water ingress. This is crucial but is considered unscientific. Also, they cannot predict that a strong earthquake won’t happen in the Himalaya. How will they save the downsteam areas from flooding if the dam breaks?”

Experts also say that the ecology of the area will be adversely impacted, the qualities that make the Ganga what it is will be gone and the river may dry up.