Himanshu Thakkar
THIS is a true story of a real city. The city gets a lot of rain every year, more than sufficient for its needs, but it does not use that rainwater.
It had hundreds of water bodies, but it has destroyed most of them and continues to destroy the remaining ones.
There is a massive river flowing through the city, but the city has used up all its water and made the river a dirty drain, releasing untreated effluents.
Proper treatment of those effluents can actually make this water fit for reuse for most purposes, but the city does not bother to treat the wastewater properly. It has wastewater treatment plants, but they are functioning at less than half their capacity and even then are not treating the water sufficiently to make it reusable.
Groundwater levels once were very high in the city, but urban residents used it at such an unsustainable pace that levels are plunging at most places.
The city is also using up the flood plains, further endangering the groundwater recharge system.
The city gets a huge quantity of water from long distances, equal to one of the highest quantities of water in India, when compared on a per capita basis. It is getting water from big dams and rivers from far off places. However, official reports say that at least 40 per cent of the water that the city gets is lost in leakages. But the city does practically nothing to fix those leakages. In fact, the city's water supply body does not have functioning meters at most bulk water lines, so it does not know where the water is lost.
The city now says that it needs more water.
The logical step would be to assess what is the least cost option for the city among the available options, including options like fixing leaks, rainwater harvesting, protecting local water bodies, groundwater recharge, treating wastewater, demand side management, ensuring that those using beyond the minimum threshold level are charged at more than the cost price of water and so on. But the city does not bother to do any such exercise (as it officially accepts), and looks for the easy option of proposing a massive dam in a far off area. The city is powerful enough to make the government cough up Rs 4,000 crores required for the new reservoir.
So what is wrong?
Well, there are some small hitches: the project is going to take up at least 2200 ha of land, will displace thousands of people from 32 villages, will destroy dense forests over at least 1300 ha including part of a wildlife sanctuary, affect a wetland that is declared a Ramsar site and also has religious significance for the people, create a 35 km long reservoir, destroy the river and all the benefits that a river provides, will destroy the carbon sink (forests) and create a new source of global warming. In fact the Environment Impact Assessment of the project (p 149) accepts, "It was found that about 95.62 per cent of Project Affected Families are not in favour of this project".
Sounds incredible?
Well, as it was said at the outset, this is a true story. The city described above is our National Capital, Delhi. The dam in question is the proposed Renuka dam over the Giri River (a tributary of the Yamuna river) in Sirmour district of Himachal Pradesh.
However, the project will not have a smooth run. It has yet to obtain the environment, forest, techno economic, planning commission and other clearances. In fact, the very legal foundation of the project is non-existent. The proponents claim that the project is the result of the May and Nov 1994 agreements between the upper Yamuna basin states of Himachal Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh (now Uttarakhand too), Rajasthan, Haryana and Delhi. However, according to the Union Ministry of Law and Justice, since Rajasthan, one of the party states, did not sign those agreements, the agreements are no longer legally valid. Haryana is already opposing the validity of those agreements and also the Renuka dam. In Himachal Pradesh itself, the Renuka Bandh Sangarsh Samiti and the Himalay Niti Abhiyana are opposing the project.
According to the Performance Audit report of the Delhi Jal Board for 2008, "Delhi has distribution losses of 40 per cent of total water supply which is abnormal and significantly higher than the acceptable norms of 15 per cent prescribed by the Ministry of Urban Development." Delhi gets around 950 million gallons per day and 40 per cent of that amounts to almost the same quantity as that proposed to be supplied from the proposed Renuka dam. So the Renuka dam is proposed, basically, to compensate for the avoidable leakage from Delhi's water system.
The Environment Impact Assessment of the project is fundamentally flawed in many respects, including some aspects described above, like not doing the options assessment or evaluating the value of the river flowing with freshwater or assessing the impact of the project on climate change and impact of climate change on the project. The public hearing itself has seen violations with the local people not knowing about the public hearing, not getting the EIA documents in their local language, among others. Now the Himachal Pradesh government is applying the emergency clause to acquire land for the project, in complete violation of legal norms and Supreme Court orders.
Recently, a detailed memorandum, signed by broad based groups including the affected people, has been sent to the authorities including the Prime Minister, saying why this project does not make any rational sense and should not be allowed to go ahead.
Incidentally, the municipal corporation officials call those who steal water from their pipes to sell it to others as water mafia. What would you call those who are pushing this project? One only hopes that better sense will prevail and the citizens and authorities in Delhi, Himachal Pradesh and elsewhere will not allow this project to go ahead.
Himanshu Thakkar (ht.sandrp@gmail.com)
South Asia Network on Dams, Rivers & People (www.sandrp.in)
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