Govt to review 60 hydel projects in Ganga basin

The environment ministry is set to review the future of 60 hydel projects in the Ganga basin following a study done by the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Roorkee. Chetan Chauhan reports.

Updated on: Jun 13, 2011, 23:42:04 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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The environment ministry is set to review the future of 60 hydel projects in the Ganga basin following a study done by the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Roorkee.

The move is significant considering the BJP played up the protection of the river Ganga before Uttarakhand assembly elections next year and Uma Bharati, who returned to BJP last week, successfully forcing the ministry to stop construction of the Srinagar project to save a temple.

The present move is being seen as an attempt to crush the movement.

The ministry had last year asked IIT Roorkee, under the National Ganga River Basin Authority, to conduct water flow studies of over a 100 hydel projects coming up on rivers Bhagirathi and Alakananda -- two main tributaries of the Ganga in upper reaches -- to understand impact of these projects on local flaura and fauna.

It was the first study of its kind for any river basin in India.

The IIT has now submitted its exhaustive report to the ministry, asking the government to incorporate its recommendations into the environment clearances granted to over 60 projects in the area, having huge environmental and religious significance.

"The risk in many cases may not be obvious but could be latent," the report spreading over three volumes said, while highlighting the possible impact of quality and quantity of water in coming years.

It has suggested the minimum water flow to be maintained in the key rivers in the Ganga basin to sustain local flora and fauna. The flow suggested depends on local bio-diversity and expected increase in local population and it could mean end of road of many hydel projects in Uttarakhand.

Existing hydel projects have been studied for their impact on environment and proposed projects were examined for their possible impact. Hence, a cumulative impact for the Ganga river basin was extrapolated.

"The Expert Appraisal Committee (EAC) will soon be asked to review all these hydel projects," said a senior environment ministry official. Some of these projects may get scrapped and scope of some others may be reduced.

The projects under consideration include big hydel projects such as the Srinagar project and Kotla-Bhel and many run of the river hydel projects proposed by the Uttarakhand government. However, ministry officials say the bigger impact will be on smaller projects.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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