2021 uttarakhand flood

Uttarakhand Flood 2021
NTPC project
rishi ganga, dhauli ganga hydro power project
Date – 7th February 2021
Affected Rivers – Rishi Ganga and Dhauli Ganga
At least 65 people are believed to have been washed away in the debris, with 141 people still reported missing (official estimate).
Rishiganga Hydro power project of 13.2 MW was damaged and the under-construction 520 MW Tapovan Vishnugad project downstream was washed away.
The main cause of the incident is yet to be determined but it is clear that there was an avalanche causing the flash flood in Rishi and Dhauli Ganga rivers.
The Tapovan power project
Of the four power plants that were damaged in the floods, the privately owned Rishi Ganga project was the smallest, with a generation capacity of 13.3 MW. 
The debris from this plant damaged other units downstream and endangered the lives of the people working there. This includes the state-run Tapovan (520 MW) and Pipal Koti (4×111 MW) projects and the private Vishnuprayag (400 MW) project.
Building of large dams on rivers alters ecosystems by fragmenting rivers. Unsustainable developmental activities will hinder India’s commitments to achieve Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030.

Besides, the construction and widening of roads leads to the clearing of forests that harbour various microbial, faunal, and floral communities impacting the ecosystems more adversely.

1. 2021 Uttarakhand Flood Chandrakant Singh Teaching Assistant, Department of HSE & Civil engineering, UPES

2. Incident Details Date – 7 th February 2021 Affected Rivers – Rishi Ganga and Dhauli  Ganga At least 65 people are believed to have been washed away in the debris, with 141 people still reported missing (official estimate). Rishiganga Hydro power project of 13.2 MW was damaged and the under-construction 520 MW Tapovan Vishnugad project downstream was washed away. The main cause of the incident is yet to be determined but it is clear that there was an avalanche causing the flash flood in Rishi and Dhauli Ganga rivers. Rescue operation at the Tunnel 1 of Tapovan

3. The Tapovan power project covered in sludge. Of the four power plants that were damaged in the floods, the privately owned Rishi Ganga project was the smallest, with a generation capacity of 13.3 MW.   The debris from this plant damaged other units downstream and endangered the lives of the people working there. This includes the state-run Tapovan (520 MW) and Pipal Koti (4×111 MW) projects and the private Vishnuprayag (400 MW) project.

4. Public Opposition for these Projects In 2019, a petition was directed at the Rishi Ganga Project by the locals raising serious concerns about the impact of the Hydel Project in the valley . Not only the Rishi Ganga Project but all of these 4 projects have faced public opposition. In fact, the Indian government has transformed this whole region into a resource frontier devoid of any ecological value, treating it as a barren wilderness that could be the source of supposedly low-carbon energy.

5. Scientists take on the incident T he Chamoli flood was the result of a glacial break-off that surprisingly occured at the edge of winter. It is hard to overlook here a detail reported by the Divecha Centre for Climate Change, Bengaluru, in a  2018 policy brief : that the average temperature in the northwestern Himalaya has risen by 0.66º C since 1991 – an increase much higher than the global average. The higher Himalaya became even warmer on average in the same period. Scientists from the Snow and Avalanche Study Establishment (SASE) in Chandigarh also reached the same conclusion – that winters in the northwest Himalaya have been getting warmer and wetter in the last 25 years.

6. Changes in winter precipitation in the Western Himalaya, 1991-2015. Graph: Kulkarni et al. (2018), based on data by Negi et al. (2018)

7. Building of large dams on rivers alters ecosystems by fragmenting rivers. Unsustainable developmental activities will hinder India’s commitments to achieve Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030. Besides, the construction and widening of roads leads to the clearing of forests that harbour various microbial, faunal, and floral communities impacting the ecosystems more adversely. The remains of a hydropower plant after severe flooding A Warning and a Wake-up Call

8. This calamity sent an alarm bell ringing, and it is for all of us to gear ourselves to respond to such situations. All the developmental activities should be reviewed not in terms of monetary gains but solely on the basis of conservation of the environment and ecology as a priority. If we want to conserve these hotspots of biological diversity, we must ensure that the region is least disturbed and that we let nature mitigate the impact. Also, restoration of forests and natural landscapes will help in reversing the warming trends. In order to stop such disasters, we need to be ecologically sensitive and environmentally conscious