CWC's game of death

The Central Water Commission had no means to forecast floods in Uttarakhand, leaving it exposed

The Central Water Commission (CWC) is the main agency that watches our rivers and forewarns the nation of floods. Its failure is written all over Uttarakhand and the recent tragedy.

The Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) in a report in April had said while there were 4,728 dams in 29 states and they were supposed to make emergency plans for these, only eight states had made these plans for just 192 large dams.

So, the people around the remaining dams have no evacuation plans in place. While there are 4,728 reservoirs and barrages in the country, the CWC provides inflow forecasts only to 28 reservoirs. But the CAG of India did not say something even more significant, that the CWC - on which the entire nation depends for information on likely floods - does not have flood forecasting stations in many flood-prone river basins. The people there are clueless to impending disaster. Uttarakhand is an example. With so many rivers on its lap, the state has just three flood forecasting stations in Srinagar, Rishikesh and Haridwar, with just one (Srinagar) in the upper reaches, where all the calamity played itself out.
 

Environment non-profit agency South Asia Network on Dams, Rivers and People (SANDRP) that has been monitoring flood forecasts of CWC wrote on its blog a day after the Kedarnath flood: "During June 15-17, when Uttarakhand was receiving the most intense rains, CWC did not make any forecasts regarding Uttarakhand. As far as the most severely affected areas of the Ganga basin upstream of Devprayag are concerned (these include the worst affected Kedarnath and Mandakini valley, the Gangotri and Bhagirathi valley and Badrinath in Alaknanda valley), the CWC has made no flood forecasts at all this year. Same is the case regarding other affected regions of Uttarakhand, including the Yamuna basin that includes the Gori-Ganga basin. What is then the role of this premier technical body tasked with flood forecasting?" Its coordinator Himanshu Thakkar points out that with just three stations and only one in the upper reaches of the Himalayan rivers, the CWC could not have made forecasts anyway.

"Even in case of Srinagar (that suffered the most with hundreds of damaged houses), the CWC site says the highest flood level (HFL) is 536.85 metre, amazingly, below the warning level of 539 metre. This means that the CWC has never forecast flood at that site and even if water level goes above HFL, it won't forecast any floods since the level could still be well below the warning level? Can one imagine a more callous technical body?'' he asked.

The CWC has 870 stations on nine river basins in the entire country and it said 800 more are needed in these and other river basins and are likely to come up in the next 10 years. The largest number of stations, 35, are in Assam, Bihar and Uttar Pradesh.

The SANDRP, in fact, pointed out to the CWC that between June 2 and 7 its flood forecasting site stopped functioning. After numerous calls and emails, the site began functioning on June 7, a fact acknowledged by the CWC.

CWC Flood Forecasting Director V D Roy has said the failure in Uttarakhand was because the CWC could not predict flash floods in advance. "Forecasts issued by the CWC generally cater to the flood of general nature having sufficient warning time available. The hilly region experiences flash flood on many occasions, which is very difficult to predict due to the fact that flood wave in these rivers travels at a very high speed due to steep slope. The lead time in such a case is very less as compared to that required in a general flood forecast system. Even the most advance country do not operate system to predict flash floods. Moreover, in a hilly region like Uttarakhand, landslides have more damaging effect than that due to rise in water level." says Thakkar. "Even a warning a couple of hours in advance can save lives. It indicates the callousness of the agency on which the country spends so much'' he added.

This underlines one thing that if there is another flood in Uttarkashi and Kedarnath, deaths are a foregone conclusion, thanks to the lack of enterprise of the country's key flood forecasting agency.