Construction of an embankment along the 10-km stretch of the Sabarmati has begun in Ahmedabad despite warnings that it may hamper natural drainage in the city and that its design is inherently flawed. The 8.5-m-high embankment is part of the Sabarmati Riverfront Development Project, the first in India where the river will be squeezed to yield land for commercial, residential and open spaces. Project planners expect to recover the cost by selling this real estate.

The project’s Environment Impact Assessment (eia) report, however, said that embanking the Sabarmati would not just prevent drainage and “cordon the river away from the people”. It would also increase its speed, thereby increasing erosion that would affect the stability of the retaining walls and bridges. The report was prepared by the Ahmedabad-based Centre for Environmental Planning and Technology and the Gujarat Ecology Commission in Vadodara. Project designer hcp Design and Project Management Pvt Ltd, formerly called Environmental Planning Collaborative, said drains from low-lying areas would be directed to the river through underground channels. The riverfront project was proposed in 1997 to develop the banks into recreational zones.

But will it? The Sabarmati is a monsoon river that remains partially dry for most part of the year. But for water from the Narmada canal that met it upstream of Ahmedabad, the Sabarmati lacked aesthetic appeal, noted the eia report. “It (riverfront) is unlikely to be an inviting public place conducive to cultural and recreational activities,” eia said.

Inspired by the riverfront development of the Thames in London, the Sabarmati project envisaged channelizing the river into a uniform width of 275 m from the varying 330m to 382 m. Ahmedabad residents feared that constricting the width of the river, would raise the water level. During the 2006 floods, the water level had reached almost the base of the bridges. According to project consultants who prepared reports on flood estimation, the increased speed of the river will bring down the highest flood level. Nonetheless, the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation plans to raise the height of bridges with a hydraulic jacking system.

Two consultants were put on the task of flood estimation in the Sabarmati. C C Patel and Associates estimated a peak flood of 0.525 million cubic feet per second (cusecs) and Sheldia Associ ates India estimated 0.594 million cusecs. They recommend building embankments that can withstand a flow of up to 0.475 million cusecs. “Considering the rainfall may not be uniform over the catchment area, they (consultants) have suggested a reduction of 10-20 per cent…. This may have serious implications in case of recurrence of most unlikely event of 5.9 lakh cusecs (0.59 million cusecs) flood,” the eia report said.

EIA had suggested terraced or sloping embankments.

“Sloping embankments offer greater resistance to flood water by helping dampen the flood velocity, dissipate the impact of floods over a much larger surface area and withstand hydraulic pressures several times higher than vertical embankments such as the ones proposed in the project,”

it said.

The flood estimation studies were done before 2002. Since then the rainfall pattern has changed. In August 2006, a flash flood washed away slums and damaged pathways constructed along the river in the first phase of the project. The peak discharge in the river then was less than 0. 3 million cusecs and the estimated loss, Rs 20 crore. “The retaining walls will protect the city against greater floods,” said an official of the Sabarmati Riverfront Development Corporation Ltd, set up by the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation to oversee the project.

Environmentalists are sceptical. “They haven’t learnt lessons from the Kosi. Embankments can never stop floods,” said Anupam Mishra, who heads the environment division of Gandhi Peace Foundation in Delhi. Riverfront development on the Tapi was put on hold after floods in Surat in 2006. Biswaroop Das, faculty member of the Centre for Social Studies, who co-authored a citizens’ report on the Surat floods, said Indian rivers could not be compared to the Thames and the Hudson. “Our rivers are monsoon-fed, while there’s are snow-fed rivers. Why don’t the planners understand this simple fact?” he asked.

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”.