"With an average annual rainfall of 1,170 mm, India is one of the wettest countries in the world. Still, even with its rich natural water resources, with more than 300,000 square meters of bodies of water, the country is plagued by environmental issues such as water pollution from raw sewage and runoff of agricultural pesticides (Sharma, 2005). Another major problem is that tap water is not potable throughout the country. This implies that people, especially those from the lower income bracket, cannot avail of clean drinking water, since these have to be bought. Repugnant as it may sound, it is a reality that millions of Indians queue up everyday at public taps for one of life's most precious commodity — water." -ADB

Thursday 11 February 2010

Cascading Hydro Power Projects and Environmental Impact on the Valley/Basin

Cascading Hydro Power Projects and Environmental Impact on the Valley/Basin is hotly debated subject even in India especially when many such projects at Arunachal and Uttarakhand are coming up for environmental clearance at MoEF. Its very important that developers keep some (gap)head left between TWL of Project I and and FRL of Project II at downstream so that river maintains it natural gravity flow and does not become a "dead pool" in the longer run.

These days, Baseline/EIA/EMP reports are  being discussed only after hydrology aspects is cleared  by the project proponents at MoEF.

It is interesting to note that Project Authorities will have scheme/project specific approach whereas Policy Planner must see all single project  from broader angle-mainly from Basin or, Valley approach.

  1. For minimum flow requirement(EFR) , policy planners do  suggest a minimum  "15% of average lean season discharge" at downstream of each project. The bigger the flow the better the sustainability. Large flow will let domestic users(human,livestock ,flaura and fauna) survive.Fishes and other fauna will live happily even though ,in the long run, domestic needs go on increasing as the valley gets populated further.
  2. Most of the times, Project proponents must conduct "Mathematical Modeling Study" using either hydrological or building block method to determine the downstream discharge through Independent Agencies(like NIH, Roorkee and Other reputed institutions/university) and take the higher of the two values( As in (1) and (2) )
Finally,There are issues in  Hydrology like lack of  enough G&D stations at high altitude, lack of  rainfall data in  some of the remoted terrains of  India and  IMD and MoWR must look into these aspects and invest more  in  investigations projects (via CWC Field offices) to get  more authentic REAL Time data ready in coming years when private/public project proponents can help India bridge the energy gap.
Some Discussions at indiawaterportal.org

A sample snap of Automatic Weather Station

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Disclaimer: This Blog is a small step towards building a knowledge-based platform for Professionals interested in "water resources management(WRM)". One of the objective is knowledge dissemination. Please note that VIEWs expressed here are purely personal.