Floods

Rivers Crossing High Flood Levels In SW Monsoon 2023 in India

October 25, 2023October 2, 2025 SANDRPLeave a comment

(Feature Image: Yamuna river near CWC flood monitoring site at Mawi in Kairana. SANDRP/June 2023)

SANDRP has compiled Highest Flood Level (HFL) breach incidents, which includes 2 incidents in June, 34 in July, 17 in August, 22 in September 2023. This report presents the final summary of all HFL breach incidents taking place during South West Monsoon season 2023. The PDF file has the details on all the HFL breach. Our previous reports on the subject can be seen here: HFL breach incidents in 2018, 2019, 2020, May-Sept 2021, Oct.-Nov 2021, May-June 2022 and July-October 2022. .

Continue reading →

Dam Disaster

Medigadda dam of Kaleshwaram project in Telangana damaged in Oct 2023

October 24, 2023November 3, 2023 SANDRP1 Comment

A portion of the Lakshmi (Medigadda) barrage on Godavari river on Telangana-Maharashtra border, part of the Kaleshwaram Lift Irrigation Project (KLIP) in Telangana’s Jayashankar Bhupalpally district[i] caved in on Oct 21 2023, Saturday night with a loud sound. The incident led to the temporary closure of the bridge of the barrage across the Godavari River that links Telangana’s Mahadevpur mandal with Maharashtra’s Gadchiroli district. The KLIP is the world’s largest Lift Irrigation Project, possibly the costliest, with expenses already above Rs 1 lakh crore. The Union Govt, recognising this as a major dam failure under para 8 of Schedule II of Dam Safety Act 2021, has promptly sent a team of six experts to assess the damage.

Continue reading →

DRP News Bulletin

DRP 231023: Need to be a little serious about Dam Safety, Flood Forecasting, Use of Early Warnings

October 23, 2023February 27, 2026 SANDRPLeave a comment

(Feature Image: Landslide warning board at Lakhwar dam site on Yamuna river. SANDRP, June 2015)

India need to relook the Dam Safety Act Experts say the Sikkim incident exemplifies blind spots in both legislation and implementation. The DSA does not promote risk-based decision-making and fails to incentivise transparency. Himanshu Thakkar, an environmental activist and coordinator of South Asia Network on Dams, Rivers and People, says that the frequency and scale of such disasters reveal a pattern of neglect: “It keeps happening regularly, people face disastrous consequences and we call these ‘natural disasters’. But there’s nothing natural about them.”

A robust DSA should allow different stakeholders to access information easily, but India’s framework falls short. “Dam safety is a public purpose function. Everything about dam safety, functions of all the institutions and committees and authorities, their reports, decisions minutes and agendas, everything should be promptly available to the public,” says Mr. Thakkar. “But nothing is in the public domain.” He adds that transparency is further obstructed when national and State bodies comprise government employees and engineers who worked on these projects, compromising objective decision making and lacking “people with a proven track record of taking independent decisions.”

Continue reading →

DRP News Bulletin

DRP 161023: Kaddam Dam Rehabilitation in Telangana: Many more will need this

October 16, 2023February 27, 2026 SANDRP1 Comment

(Kaddam dam spilling over with flood waters in July 2023. Image Source: SM)

Telangana’s Kaddam Dam, built with inadequate spillway capacity, has seen multiple threats and disasters over the years, starting from the very first year after its commissioning in 1958. The dam again saw threat of being washed away during monsoon this year. The Telangana government has decided to rehabilitate the dam at a cost of Rs 640-700 Cr, by reconstruction of spillway and installation of new gates. We hope the new spillway capacity will be in line with the changed monsoon rainfall pattern and will be able to take care of the higher probable maximum precipitation and higher probable maximum flood. Though we are unlikely to get to know how this is going to happen, as the standard operating procedure of all dam owners in India is secrecy rather than transparency even in dam safety aspects. One also hopes this is done at the earliest, and till that is achieved, the dam rule curve will be changed to ensure the dam does not face disastrous situations during monsoon.

Continue reading →

Dam Safety

Dam Safety Act & the role of Dams in the 2023 HP Floods

October 11, 2023 SANDRP8 Comments

In order to have high standards of dam safety the prerequisites are designing and constructing dams with reasonable safety margins; operating and maintaining them safely; and having emergency arrangements to address situations that might arise. Operation of dam within its ambit also includes thorough understanding of likely impacts and its management in case of flooding, in any emergency situation or in the event of dam failure, both upstream and downstream on communities living there, their livelihoods and also on infrastructure and property which can get affected. In fact in many countries like Sweden and in many states of the USA, a dam is assigned a dam safety class i.e. A, B or C depending upon the significance of the damage that might occur in case of dam failure, class A being assigned to dams whose failure might cause significance loss of public life and property. Dam safety requirements are calibrated accordingly and a higher burden is put on dam owners of higher class, concerning safety management system, emergency plans, overall assessments, and annual dam safety reporting.

Continue reading →

Dam Disaster

Glacial Lake FLood destroys Teesta-3 Dam in Sikkim, brings wide-spread destruction

October 4, 2023November 7, 2023 SANDRPLeave a comment

A Glacial Lake Outburst Flood (GLOF) that originated at South Lhonak Glacial Lake at around 00.40 hours on Oct 4, 2023, washed away the 60 m high dam of Sikkim’s biggest hydropower project, the 1200 MW Teesta 3 HEP. The flood has brought unprecedented disaster all along the river in Sikkim and further downstream in W Bengal and then Bangladesh. Central Water Commission (CWC) reported early in the morning of Oct 4 that there was cloud burst at the site of the lake burst, the cloud burst could have played the role in triggering the lake burst. (Feature image above: A combination of before after photos of Teesta 3 dam put together by Siddharth Agarwal.)

Continue reading →

Dam floods

Avoidable flood disaster from unaccountable Sardar Sarovar operation: Why was River Bed Power House stopped since Sept 6?

September 20, 2023September 26, 2023 SANDRP2 Comments

The avoidable flood disaster brought in Gujarat and upstream Madhya Pradesh, starting from the night of Sept 16, 2023 by unaccountable operation of the Sardar Sarovar Project (SSP) Dam has created unimaginable impacts for lakhs of people in several districts, the full contours of the damage are still not fully available. But another intriguing aspect of this man-made disaster has come to light. Shockingly, there was no power generation at the 1200 MW River Bed Power House (RBPH) of the SSP from Sept 6 to Sept 16. This not only means loss of power generation of about 270 million units (MU), worth over Rs 80 Crores even at low price of Rs 3 per unit), but also it would have meant release of 1200 cumecs or, 42000 cusecs and over ten days, this would have meant reduction of about 12000 cumecs or 4.2 lakh cusecs from peak discharge for 24 hours, and this itself would have hugely reduced the flood disaster.

Continue reading →

Dam floods

Unaccountable Sardar Sarovar operators again bring avoidable floods in downstream Gujarat

September 17, 2023September 21, 2023 SANDRP1 Comment

Late, lethargic and unaccountable actions of Sardar Sarovar Project (SSP) Dam operators have once again contributed to huge and largely avoidable downstream floods in Gujarat. The water level at Golden Bridge in Bharuch is approaching HFL (Highest Flood Level) today on Sept 17, 2023, but these floods could have been significantly lower and much less disastrous both for SSP upstream and downstream areas if SSP authorities had taken action earlier based on actionable information available and based on sound reservoir operation principles of following a rule curve.

Continue reading →

Floods

Rivers Crossing Highest Flood Levels in India in August 2023

September 6, 2023September 6, 2023 SANDRPLeave a comment

(Feature Image: An aerial view of flood-affected areas, in Rishikesh. Image Credit PTI/ Sourrce:-Out Look, 15 Aug. 2023.)

Though August 2023 has turned out to be hottest and driest month in a century; the first half the month has seen extreme flood events happening in North, North East and Central zones of the country causing breach in the highest flood level (HFL) at least at 17 flood monitoring sites being managed by Central Water Commission (CWC). These sites are in Ganga, Narmada and Brahmaputra basins.

There are some sites where HFL has been breached in June and July 2023 also and peak flood level of these sites is given below the peak levels attained in August 2023. The details of 2 sites breaching HFLs in June 2023 & 38 sites in July 2023 can be seen by clicking on respective hyperlinks. A separate report analyzing the severe flood situation in Alaknanda and Ganga basin on August 14, 2023 can be seen here.

Continue reading →

CWC - Central Water Commission

July-August 2023: Problems in CWC Flood Monitoring & Forecast

August 19, 2023August 19, 2023 SANDRPLeave a comment

(Feature Image: CWC’s Delhi Railway Bridge forecast site showing abrupt changes in Yamuna water level during unusual flood spell in July 2023)

July and August are peak months of South West monsoon. There has already been flood related destruction in several states including Himachal Pradesh, Punjab, Haryana, Delhi and Uttarakhand so far. Amid these flood spells, SANDRP has observed many serious issues plaguing Central Water Commission’s (CWC) flood forecasting and monitoring work and some of these are described below.

Continue reading →