This week’s DRP News Bulletin brings two encouraging reports about revival of Kham River in Sambhajinagar district in Maharashtra. The Bulletin also brings report of Gujarat Human Rights Commission sending notice to the state and city government to uphold the environment rights of citizens in Vadodara. There is also here the news of signing of MOU for beginning of 4 km water taxi along Yamuna in Delhi upstream of Wazirabad barrage, of course without any environment or social impact assessment, any environmental clearance, any public consultation process, with blind faith in Sabarmati River Front Development model.
Continue reading “DRP 170325: Can we work for more Kham Rivers and Less Sabarmati Rivers?”Tag: Drought
DRP 100325: “Good Floods Reduce the Risk of Bad Floods”
(Feature Image: An aerial view of the flooded collectorate ghat at the bank of Ganga river in Patna. PTI Photo/Source: The Asian Age)
This remarkable report this week, quoting the work of Gilbert F White, also considered “father of floodplain management” provide a number of lessons in flood management. These include: – “Floods are ‘acts of God’, flood losses are largely acts of man” (By ‘acts of God,’ he meant that floods are perfectly natural events);
– “Yes, floods will happen. Whether or not those floods are good floods or bad floods, whether or not they cause damage is largely up to us”;
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DRP 030325: Supreme Court asks: How a city can become smart without protecting the water bodies, wetlands
In a welcome development, the Supreme Court of India has asked, in the context of Ajmer City in Rajasthan, how can a city become smart without protecting the water bodies/ wetlands? How cities will become smarter by encroachments on the water bodies and wetlands? The Supreme Court bench threatened the Rajasthan government of contempt of court for non-compliance of order dated Dec 1 2023 as also the order of National Green Tribunal on Dec 13 2021.
The Supreme Court here has hit the nail and raised a very fundamental question that is relevant to all the cities across India as they are all guilty of allowing encroachments and destruction of local water bodies in their respective areas. This is a suicidal step as it has adverse impact on the cities in multiple ways and yet, most cities consider this smart and in fact get away with it. There is also no National Urban Water Policy guiding the cities solve the puzzle of multiple issues handled by multiple departments, including some by the local, state and central governments. This self-created mess in the cities comes handy for the various vested interests in encroaching more water bodies. The judiciary, so far has also not been effective in addressing this issue with any effectiveness.
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DRP 240225: Unanswered questions on Ken Betwa Project
At a well-attended meeting at India International Centre in Delhi on Feb 20 2025, organised by VIDHI Centre for Legal Policy, a panel of speakers including Shri Shashi Shekhar (former secretary, Union Ministry of Water Resources) and Shri Jasbir Singh Chauhan (former Principle Chief Conservator of Forests, Madhya Pradesh) and Himanshu Thakkar of SANDRP, a number of fundamental questions were raised about the controversial Ken Betwa River Link Project. Unfortunately, no clear answers are forth coming from the authorities.
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DRP 100225: EAC & MoEF’s shocking decision to clear Teesta 3 Dam raises a stir
(Feature Image: Teesta III HEP dam was washed away on the intervening night of Oct. 3-4, 2023 on account of a GLOF. The flood in the downstream was magnified by the dam disaster. Photo: Mayalmit Lepcha/Source: Sanctuary Nature Foundation)
The decision of Union Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF)’s Expert Appraisal Committee (EAC) on River Valley Projects on Jan 10 2025 has understandably raised a stir and earlier the EAC and MoEF reviews and reverses this decision, better it will be. The decision is shocking on a number of counts. The EAC itself had raised a number of issues related to the project in its earlier meeting, but decided to clear the project without getting satisfactory resolution of the issues.
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Groundwater 2024: Increasing Impacts of Climate Change
Several studies and reports published during 2024 have underlined the rising adverse impacts of changing climate on groundwater resources in India and globally in multiple ways which will continue to accelerate in future. While the groundwater greatly contributes to river baseflows during lean period, its role in flooding is miniscule comparatively with surface flows in Peninsular India. In North India the drying northwest monsoon and warmer winters have been found driving groundwater depletion by raising demand for irrigation water.
The groundwater is getting warmer, also impacting subterranean aquatic ecosystems. Besides, the rising temperatures are causing more evaporation losses and leading to pumping of more groundwater to compensate for the losses. The extreme rainfall events might speed up fertilizers seeping into groundwater table contaminating it. Similarly, the rising sea level is found fueling erosion in coastal areas and facilitating seawater intrusion of the coastal aquifers. At the same time the decline in low and medium intensity rainfall and warmer weather patterns are reducing groundwater recharge, increasing seawater ingress.
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DRP 270125: India’s non-functional Sewage Treatment Plants
(Feature Image: 10 MLD Kundli CETP in Sonipat. BS Rawat/SANDRP/May 2023)
A detailed report in this week’s DRP News Bulletin below shows how India’s Sewage Treatment Plants (STPs), Govt’s main weapon against pollution of rivers in Urban areas, have been a failure for decades. It is pertinent to note that this is the golden jubilee year of Water Pollution Control Act of 1974, that led to the formation of Central, state Pollution Control Boards, and the whole water pollution control bureaucracy, institutions and legal architecture. There should be little doubt that whole architecture has abysmally failed in achieving basic objective for which it was created, including ensuring proper treatment of urban sewage.
India has spent thousands of crores of rupees on these STPs, mostly, mega, centralized projects. But there has been little effort to address governance of the STPs, to ensure that they function as required and provide the results that they have been set up for. Whether they function or not, qualitatively or quantitatively, year after year and decades after decades, there are no consequences! In fact, if treated properly, sewage can become a asset rather than nuisance that it now is. The Judiciary too, right up to the apex court, have badly failed in achieving any improvement in this eminently justiciable issue.
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DRP 200125: Whither Env Clearance Rejection rate from Expert Appraisal Committee or MoEF?
A detailed review of functioning of Union Ministry of Environment and Forests’ (MoEF) Expert Appraisal Committee (EAC) on River Valley Projects (RVP) for 2024 by SANDRP shows that the committee or for that matter MoEF has almost non-existent rejection rate. Even when a project is not cleared, when it applies again, it gets clearance, whether the application if for stage I (Terms of Reference) or Stage II (Environment Clearance- EC) clearance. Even in some cases like Pump Storage Projects (PSP) in Western Ghats or the Hydropower projects in disaster prone Himalayas, including the disaster-stricken projects like the 1200 MW Teesta III projects in Sikkim, the scrutiny including field visits by the EAC Sub committees is minimal, not worthy calling even scrutiny.
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DRP 130125: Will Judiciary take these matters to logical conclusion?
There are at least four cases in this past week where the judiciary has used strong words or taken up crucial issues in water, dams, hydropower projects, wetlands and riverbed mining related issues. In the case related to the safety of Mullaperiyar dam on Kerala-TN border, the Supreme Court has prodded the Centre to wake up from the slumber to ensure that National Dam Safety Authority quickly forms a panel to examine the project. This case has wide ranging repercussions not only about this project, but also functioning of NDSA and other bodies under the Dam Safety Act 2021. Indeed, there is huge question mark as to what extent NDSA and DSA has made our dams any safer.
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DRP 301224: We are not studying our rivers, Global North is studying
(Feature Image: Ramganga river at Marchula, Uttarakhand. Bhim Singh Rawat/SANDRP/Sept. 2024)
Exactly three months back, on Sept 30 2024, we had highlighted the urgent need for credible river studies in India (https://sandrp.in/2024/09/30/drp-nb-300924-focus-on-river-studies/). A new research report published last week in Nature has corroborated this, showing that volume of research across global south is disproportionately small compared to need based on basic population, water withdrawals and water consumption.
Based on review of 4237 publications using machine learning and desk review of 325 publications, analysis of 4713 case studies across 286 basins, it shows that river research currently in global south is predominantly led by global North institutions, thus the river research is shaped by selection of theme and locations done by such institutions.
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SANDRP 