[Long before a deadly flood hit two
hydroelectric dams, scientists warned repeatedly that such projects were
dangerous in a fragile region made more so by global warming.]
By Mujib Mashal and Hari Kumar
The Himalayas have been warming at
an alarming rate for years, melting ice long trapped in glaciers, soil and
rocks, elevating the risk of devastating floods and landslides, scientists
warned. Nearby populations were vulnerable, they said, and the region’s
ecosystem had become too fragile for large development projects.
But the Indian government overrode
the objections of experts and the protests of local residents to blast rocks
and build hydroelectric power projects in volatile areas like the one in the
northern state of Uttarakhand, where disaster struck.
Officials said Monday that bodies
of 26 victims had been recovered while the search proceeded for nearly 200
missing people. On Sunday a surge of water and debris went roaring down the
steep mountain valleys of the Rishiganga river, erasing everything in its path.
Most of the victims were workers on the power projects.
Villagers said the authorities
overseeing the expensive development projects had not prepared them for what
was to come, giving a false sense of confidence that nothing was going to
happen.
“There was no program or training
in the village about disaster management by the government,” said Bhawan Singh
Rana, head of the Raini village, hit by some of the worst damage. “Our village
is on a rock, and we fear that it may slide anytime.”
Security forces focused on one
tunnel where they said 30 people were trapped. Food was airdropped to about 13
villages where the roads have been cut off, with roughly 2,500 people trapped.
The devastation of the Uttarakhand
floods has once again focused attention on the fragile ecosystem of the
Himalayas, where millions of people are feeling the impact of global warming.
The World Bank has warned that climate change could sharply diminish living
conditions for up
to 800 million people in South Asia. But the effects are already felt,
often in deadly ways, in large parts of the Himalayan belt from Bhutan to
Afghanistan.
The region has about 15,000
glaciers, which are retreating at a rate of 100 to 200 feet per decade. The
melting feeds or creates thousands of glacial lakes that can suddenly break
through the ice and rocky debris holding them back, causing catastrophic
floods. In Nepal, Bhutan, India and Pakistan, a large number of glacial lakes
have been deemed imminently dangerous by The International Centre for
Integrated Mountain Development, an intergovernmental group.
Nepal has been particularly
vulnerable, with climate change forcing entire villages to migrate to lower
lands for survival from a deepening water crisis. Deadly flash floods, some
caused by glacial lakes bursting, have also become more frequent.
Scientists have warned repeatedly
that development projects in the region are a deadly gamble, potentially making
matters worse.
Ravi Chopra, the director of
People’s Science Institute in Uttarakhand, said a 2012 expert group appointed
by the government had recommended that dams should not be built in
the Alaknanda-Bhagirathi basin, including on the Rishiganga. He was part
of a scientific committee appointed by India’s highest court in 2014 that also
advised against building dams in “the para-glacial zone,” what he described as
an area where the valley floor is more than about 7,000 feet above sea level.
“But the government has gone ahead
and chosen to build them,” he said. Both of the hydroelectric projects hit by
Sunday’s flood — one obliterated and the other badly damaged — were built in
that zone, he said.
D.P. Dobhal, a former scientist at
the government-run Wadia Institute of Himalayan Geology, said, “When we develop
such projects in the Himalayas such as hydro projects or roads and rail, in
detailed project reports the glacier study data is never taken into
consideration or included.”
The government is building more
than 500 miles of highway in Uttarkhand to improve access to several major
Hindu temples, despite environmentalists’ objections to the massive forest
clearance required, which can hasten erosion and raise the risk of landslides.
A scientific committee appointed by
India’s Supreme Court and led by Dr. Chopra concluded last year that the
government, in building the highway to the width of 10 meters, about 33 feet,
had gone against the advice of its own experts at the Transport Ministry. The
government had argued a wider road brought more economic dividends and was
needed for potential deployment of large-scale military equipment to the
disputed border with China.
The Supreme Court sided with one
faction of the scientific committee and ruled that the road should be limited
to 5.5 meters, or about 18 feet. But by that time, hundreds of acres of forest
and tens of thousands of trees had already been cut, a report in the
Indian news outlet The Scroll said.
“When you have your own ministry
experts telling you the Himalayan region roads should not have a tarred surface
of more than 5.5 meters, and then to go against your own experts’
recommendations, then that is a serious matter,” Dr. Chopra said. “Unless the
courts look into the issue of the sanctioning officials and the executing
officials personally accountable, I don’t think the situation will change.”
Trivendra Singh Rawat, the chief
minister of Uttarakhand, warned against seeing the flooding as “a reason to
build anti-development narrative.”
“I reiterate our government’s
commitment to develop hills of Uttarakhand in a sustainable manner, and we will
leave no stone unturned in ensuring the achievement of this goal,” Mr. Rawat said
on Twitter.
Exactly what caused the latest
flooding was not clear as of Monday night, with the Indian government saying a
team of experts would visit the site to investigate. Ranjeet Rath, the head of
India’s geological survey, said initial information suggested a “glacial calving at
highest altitude.” Calving is the breaking of ice chunks from a glacier’s edge.
Scientists studying satellite
imagery from before and after the flooding said it was likely not caused by a
glacial lake bursting, as no such lake was visible in the images.
They said the disaster most likely
began with the collapse of a rock slope that had become unstable from thawing
of ice in recent summers, and such a landslide could have broken up part of a
glacier.
An avalanche could have dammed the
river temporarily, creating a lake which then broke free, said Umesh K. Haritashya, a scientist who studies glacial
hazards at the University of Dayton in Ohio.
Avalanches also generate heat from
friction, which can melt ice that lies in its path or is in the tumbling
debris.
“Basically it’s a landslide that is
some fraction rock, and some fraction ice,” said Dan Shugar, a geomorphologist at the University of Calgary
in Alberta. “A lot of the ice melted. And it might have picked up a lot more.”
The Raini village was in one of the
areas hit hardest on Sunday, where the 13-megawatt Rishiganga hydro power
project was completely washed away. Afterward, roughly 100 of the village’s 150
residents spent the night in the open.
“We did not sleep in our houses out
of fear that more water may come, rocks may shift, something more dangerous may
happen,” said Mr. Rana, the village head. “We took our bedding up in the
forest, lit some fires, and somehow passed the night.”
The area was the site of a
well-known environmental protest against deforestation in the 1970s.
Protesters, a large number of them women, would hug trees to stop loggers from cutting
them, in a movement that became known as “chipko,” or embrace.
Mr. Rana said local residents also
held protests against construction of the Rishiganga power project, which began
generating electricity last year, and they even filed court cases, but to no
avail. They feared that the blasting of rocks would cause deadly landslides.
“We used to hear blasting and see
the rocks shift,” he said. “When this project was under construction, half of
our village slid. We requested to be shifted from here to another place. The
government said they would do it, but it never happened.”
Bhadra Sharma contributed reporting
from Kathmandu, Nepal, and Henry Fountain from Albuquerque.