Tag: Nagpur

2024: Dam Induced Floods in Urban India
Urban Flood

2024: Dam Induced Floods in Urban India

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(Feature Image: A drone visual of the flood-affected areas of Vijayawada city on Sept. 6, 2024. Credit: ANI Photo/Source: Rediff.com)

Having covered dam induced flood incidents and embankment breach flooding events in part 1 and part 2, this third part on annual overview compiles media reports on manmade Urban flood disasters in India during the year 2024. While the cities of Pune, Nasik, Nagpur, Vadodara and Bharuch were affected by dam induced floods, the high discharges from Prakasam barrage and multiple breaches in Budameru river deluged the Vijayawada city. Interestingly, these urban flood episodes coincided with heavy rainfall events giving a reality check to dam and city managers.

In addition to failure in dam management, the deluge in Pune, Vadodara and Vijayawada city were particularly worsened by river front development projects and encroachment on river floodplains putting question marks on the urban planning and development works in these cities. Similarly, the breach in embankment of Munak canal in Delhi flooded several homes Bawana area during the monsoon season.

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2022 Fly ash dam breaches in India
Dam Disaster

2022 Fly ash dam breaches in India

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(Feature image:- This is the second time in the six months that Rautdih village has become inundated by the breach of ash pond embankment in Bokaro. ToI, Oct. 09, 2022)

Most mining companies make dams to store the semi solid slurry waste from the mines. Similarly most thermal power projects have fly ash dams to store the fly ash slurry. These dams store highly toxic slurries but there is little happening by way of regulation, monitoring or compliance at design, construction or operation level. Many of these dams breach or overflow, leading of release of the toxic slurry in the downstream areas. These dams do not even come under monitoring of Central Water Commission or under the dam safety act passed by the parliament. Despite accidents happening with huge adverse consequences, there is no accountability.

In this report, we have compiled the instances that we could locate about breaches of such dams in 2022. We earlier wrote about the Singrauli instance in April 2020 and in the 2019 SW Monsoon dam breach compilation report.

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NAG – The River That Lends Life And A Name To Nagpur
Dams

NAG – The River That Lends Life And A Name To Nagpur

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Guest Blog by by Nivedita Khandekar

This story from Nag River in Nagpur is second in the series of online stories of urban rivers from across India. Please share your feedback and provide us with suggestions (read more in appendix). If you have any urban river stories or images that you might want to share, please send them to ht.sandrp@gmail.com and asid@veditum.org.

With an area of little over 200 sq kms, Nagpur, the geographical centre of India, is a lucky city to have 11 lakes and two rivers within municipal limits. Nag Nadi – which lends its name to the city – is the main river along with the other, Pili Nadi; the two later merge and further join the Kanhan river near the city outskirts.

It has always been believed that the river starts as an outflow from the western weir of Ambazari Lake in west Nagpur. In 1998, a bunch of researchers went to further explore the catchment of the lake and found the actual origin of the river is up north of the lake at a place called Lava, more than 25 kms from this western weir. 

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