DEVELOPMENT DEFICIT
Monday, 19 September 2011 23:53
BY SUDARSHAN CHHOTORAY
The recent floods in the Mahanadi system have fuelled many controversies about the cause, magnitude, flood control and management, repair of embankments, disaster preparedness and response and relief and rehabilitation. Despite the tall claims of institutionalisation of disaster management and flood control measures, Odisha witnessed severe floods, which affected 2.2 million people in 19 districts. The situation in four districts, Kendrapada, Jagatsinghpur, Cuttack and Puri, was grim and so in Subanrnapur in the lower catchment. Even State capital Bhubaneswar was not spared.
The situation further worsened following temporary breaches over river embankments in at least 48 places (35 in Mahanadi, 10 in Brahmani and three in Baitarani). Many of the deployed 911 boats and rescue team could not reach the people in time. The larger question is whether we have prepared ourselves to respond to a natural disaster of such unprecedented form and carry out rescue and relief work with immediate effect. No, we have utterly failed to do so. Because, though the State Government has institutionalised disaster mitigation and management system through the Odisha Disaster Management Authority (OSDMA), at the grassroots level, the villages, plans/response cells are not in place or not functioning. Secondly, we are still following colonial relief administration as the Odisha Relief Code needs to be amended.
Finally, the effects of embankment repair, safety and management lie with engineers or, so to say, contractors and not on local people. Besides, there are many roadblocks to drain flood waters to sea unless we evict encroachments all along the river basin and deltas. Even questions have now arisen on development projects like road and railway connections and drainages, which are virtually blocking floodwaters in many places thereby inundating new areas. The National Disaster Management Act 2005, notified on April 12, 2010, even though talks about governance, knowledge, strengthening disaster preparedness and reducing the underlying risk factors etc., lacks risk assessments, livelihood restorations and social security schemes. Efforts should be on to redesign and implement the Act from district to national levels.
The recent floods were caused due to releasing of water from the Hirakud reservoir by opening its sluice gates from September 6. Initially, 10 gates were opened when the storage was 625.60ft, followed by 59 gates three days later. It played havoc in Sambalpur, Subarnapur and Boudh besides the Mahandi delta, but most surprisingly, it had also devastating effects in Bargarh and Jharsuguda. Generally, excessive rains in Chhattisgarh and the resultant inflow of water are blamed for overflowing of Hirakud, but major rivers and tributaries like Tel, Ib and Bhedan also contributed substantially to the floods.
While speaking to this correspondent, Pranab Chaudhury of the Forum for Policy Dialogue on Water Conflicts in India, said, “Not only rivers and tributaries in lower catchment of Hirakud contributed to the floods, the Government’s embankment management policy in the deltaic region was also responsible for the deluge. On the plea of preparedness and repair, the Government has been draining money from 2002 to 2007, whereas the total loss caused by the floods was `4, 000 crore. The Government has spent `15 crore for flood control and `600 crore for relief expenditure, and by now, we have embankments running up to 6,515 km.”
The Hirakud Dam was constructed at a cost of `100 crore and dedicated to the nation by Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru on January 13, 1957 with an objective of flood control in the Mahanadi basin, besides other priorities like power generation and irrigation. The Mahandi basin is the largest river basin in Odisha which covers 42 per cent of the State’s area. About 1.5 crore people are living in the Mahandi banks and basin area. The Mahandi basin area has been a victim to floods time and again. There were severe floods in 1937, 1955, 1957, 1970, 1980, 1982, 2001, 2003, 2006 and 2008 and now in 2011. Hirakud has 98 gates. A maximum 88 gates were opened in 1980 while in 2001, 52 gates, in 2003 54 gates and in 2011 59 were opened. In 2006, the economic loss was 10 per cent of State’s annual budget. During 2003-2007, 40 lakh people were affected. Nearly 70 per cent of them are also periodically exposed. Earlier, coastal Odisha was more vulnerable. Now, the State’s western and northern parts are more prone to the disaster. Natural calamities, including floods, claimed 1,152 lives in last three years.
In 2006, 67.39 lakh people were affected and 105 lost their life spread over 27 districts due to floods; in 2007, in three different months, July, August and September, 13.32 lakh, 22.47 lakh, 42.35 lakh people were affected whereas 32, 20 and 39 people lost their lives, respectively, spread over 10 to 15 districts. In 2008 June, 14.94 lakh people were affected and 14 persons were killed in six districts and in September the same year, 45.23 lakh were affected and 96 were killed in 19 districts. In 2009, 3.94 lakh people were affected and as many as 56 were killed in floods in 15 districts.
Is it rule curve or mismanagement? “Another aspect of the recent floods is the biasness among our engineering fraternity for large dams and irrigation projects. That may be a reason why our political administration is trying to shift its blame to some engineers,” says Tapan Padhi of the Odisha Water Forum (OWF). “While we had the capacity of releasing 17 lakh cusec of water then, how did 13 lakh cusecs cause overflowing, leakages and breaches? This flood has thoroughly exposed the Naveen Patnaik Government’s inability to control floods, rescue the people and deliver relief,” he alleged.
Water policy analyst Bimal Prasad Pandia said, “After just three years of the rigged flood in 2008, we are again forced to suffer a flood this year. Like the 2008 flood, this one too was an outcome of complete neglect of the Hirakud Sam’s safety, a grossly flawed dam management policy, a dreadful 'Rule Curve' and a senseless ignorance to rain forecasts.” He added, “There is another similarity to the 2008 flood. Both floods occurred in September, and while rains started pouring, the dam had a water level beyond 625 feet.”
Ranjan Panda of Water Initiatives Odisha says, “59 out of the 64 spillway gates of the dam were opened to release 9, 74,373 cusec of water while 10, 37,000 cusecs was entering the reservoir. Almost all districts downstream were hugely impacted by this. In districts like Sambalpur, the areas not flooded even in 2008, were inundated this time. The dam management authority kept watching for this situation to come even as the water in the reservoir kept increasing steadily from July 20, “Now, the Government blames heavy rains at the upper catchment and release of water from Chhattisgarh as the reasons for floods. However, daily and weekly predictions by the IMD were continuously ignored. It proves that the dam management authorities were not following a coordinated approach with Chhattisgarh and IMD. The WIO demands that the Odisha Government establish proper communication and clearly defined coordinate action with Chhattisgarh on management and planning of the Mahanadi system. The Odisha Government must enter into a legally binding water management and basin planning treaty that would help manage the Mahanadi water throughout the year”.
Further, the Odisha Water Forum and Baitarani Initiative has tried to analyse the 'Rule Curve' - based reservoir operation of Hirakud to see whether the violations in the Rule Curve prescriptions add to flood severity or the 'Rule Curve' itself needs modification with changing circumstances in the dam's catchment and reservoir capacity. Based on a rapid analysis of rainfall, runoff, siltation, reservoir level data over about 50 years (1957-2009) and the current flood's daily observations along with post-Hirakud water-resources development trends in Chhattisgarh, which contributes to 85 per cent of the dam's catchment, there is need to revisit of the 'Rule Curve' developed in 1988 to make it more adaptive to changing climatic and development contexts, it said.
According to a WIO report, the Hirakud reservoir level was at about 595 feet in July, but it started steadily increasing from July 20 when it touched 596.85. On July 24, it touched 601.75 feet, and by August 1, it reached 607.27 feet. Then, it continued to increase and from August 9 it went above 620 feet.
“Water storage on various dates would show how the dam management was responsible for the situation which has virtually forced it to release huge amount of floodwater in the last few days. Actually, the dam authorities were forced to open as many as 49 gates in 48 hours! As per the ‘Rule Curve,’ while on August 1 the recommended minimum water level should have been 590 feet, it was kept at as high as 607.27 feet,” WIO sources informed.
------The writer is a senior freelance journalist
Published on 20th September 2011, THE PIONEER, BHUBANESWAR
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