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 “Avoidable flood disaster from unaccountable Sardar Sarovar operation: Why was River Bed Power House stopped since Sept 6?”Tag: SSP
How SSNNL violated its own Flood Memorandum 2020 during recent SSD induced floods
During the recent Sardar Sarovar Dam (SSD) induced flood disaster in areas downstream of the dam in Gujarat, the dam operator, SSNNL (Sardar Sarovar Narmada Nigam Limited) violated its own Flood Memorandum (FM) 2020[i] in multiple ways.
The FM-2020 titled “Disaster Management Plan – 2020” provides detailed information about how the dam operation is to be done during South West Monsoon 2020, that is from June 1, 2020 to Oct 15, 2020, or whenever the monsoon has withdrawn. It is published by SSNNL’s Flood Control Cell and carries the names of six highest functionaries of SSNNL on second page: Chairman, Managing Director, Jt MD, Director (CAD), Director (Canal) and Director (Civil). It says Officer in charge of Flood Control Cell of SSNNL is Executive Engineer (Narmada Project Main Canal Division-2) and the FM-2020 is compiled by Superintending Engineer, Narmada Project Design Circle.
An earlier version of the Flood Memorandum for 2018[ii] is also available, which is useful as it has some additional information.
Continue reading “How SSNNL violated its own Flood Memorandum 2020 during recent SSD induced floods”
DRP News Bulletin 16 Jan. 2017 (MoEF’s Expert Committee Shows Anti-People, Anti-Environment Biases)
EAC against entertaining ‘anti-development’ representations The expert appraisal committee (EAC) on river valley and hydel projects of the Union Environment Ministry has decided “not to take any cognizance of such representations” received by its members. In its Dec. 30, 2016 meeting, the committee concluded that once a project proposal reaches the EAC for appraisal, it has crossed the stage of public consultation and “the EAC should not go back in time, and should not reopen it, by entertaining unsubstantiated representations received from the people”.
The EAC noted that in case of any clarification regarding action taken on such representations under the RTI Act, the EAC prescribed that a standard reply “action has been taken in accordance with the decisions taken in the 1st meeting of the EAC for River Valley and HEP on 30.12.2016” should suffice. “It was also felt that many of the objections raised are repetitive. Many such kind of representations have an anti-development attitude so that the projects are kept on hold or delayed. This has financial implications to the developers in particular and to the nation in general.
The committee emphasized that relevant ministries scrutinised every aspect of a project and proposed it for final appraisal only when all details were in place. If not satisfied that public consultation had been completed properly, the EAC said it could ask the project promoter to do the needful. The committee also made allowance for representations with “new points” and “grave consequences” on which comments from project proponents could be sought. The EAC considered 13 projects in its December 30 meeting and cleared eight of them.
Environmental activists, however, pointed out the impracticality of the contention that representations should be restricted to the 30-day public consultation window. Sripad Dharmadhikari also, in his blog has mentions various reasons to counter the EAC’s suspicious justifications. He also says that the fact that a body which is supposed to represent the environmental perspective displays such an attitude is the biggest critique of the EAC and the environmental clearance process that it is a part of. The newly constituted MOEF’s EAC on River Valley Projects has in their very first meeting shown anti people, anti democratic and anti environment attitude.
SANDRP 