On the Severe Enviromental Disaster at Badrinath Shrine in Uttarakhand

COMMUNICATION

Recently there has been a very severe disaster in the State of UttaraKhand in the northern part of India. This region had been in controversy for over a decade due to the construction of several dams on the Ganga river and its various upland tributaries in the Himalayan region.

These numerous small and big dams were constructed with great hurry but without proper hydrological, geological, hydraulics-related investigations including geological mappings and expected implications. The construction of dams alters the flow regime of the rivers if a thirsty aquifer (water-bearing strata of the earth in which water is contained and flows like in a river, such as, mythologically, the underground Saraswati river confluencing the Ganga-Yamuna rivers at Allahabad) is encountered in the process of dam construction. Then most river water gets lost in such aquifers and later on the people start crying that the river has vanished due to dam-constructions as also the lost river water is manifested when the outflow from the dam becomes much less than the water inflow into the dam. This may also result in situations of river diversion. Apart from these, the flow regimes and catchment areas of the region get severely disturbed, and thus when heavy rains occur, floods enter in unknown and unwanted areas which no one had even visualised.

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This is what had happened in Uttarakhand
with heavy rains coupled with cloud-bursts and huge quantities of ground-water released from water-saturated aquifers exposed by the thunder-strikes, together making an extremely large volume of water flowing all around in unexpected and unknown areas causing severe flood fury. Thousands of pilgrims visiting Kedarnath and other holy shrines were washed away or buried in the debris brought in by the floodwaters and in landslides but lakhs got stranded for weeks, nowhere to go, nothing to eat or drink. Unfortunately, rescue operations started late and most operations got concen-trated in the Hemkund area while the largest chunk of pilgrims were at Kedarnath and its downsides.

Such a severe tragedy could have easily been avoided if the Ministry of Environment and Forests (MOEF) had among its decision-makers persons from civil engineering, hydrology, hydraulics, environmental engineering, geology, etc. back-grounds. But there exist almost none of such specialists in the Ministry in which the entire decision-making command is with the pseudo-environmentalists having zero knowledge of hydraulics without which no environmental or water-resource project can ever be planned, executed or investigated. Unfortunately, the
real environmental engineers are considered outcastes and treated as viruses in the MOEF. However, this writer thinks that it is never too late to learn.

Devendra S. Bhargava
Bhargava Lane,
Devpura,
Haridwar-249401
Mobile: +91-9412074331

Prof. (Er.) Dr Devendra S. Bhargava, BE (Civil), PGD (Public Health Engineering), ME (PH Engineering), Ph.D (Environmental Engineering), D.Sc (Environmental Science) had been teaching after post-graduation in 1960 at several insttutions including BITS, Pilani, Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Kanpur, Asian Institute of Technology, Bangkok etc. and retired as Professor (Environmental) from Roorkee University (now an IIT). He had authored 470 researh papers and received 32 academic awards including the UGC’s most prestigious Swami Pranavananda award as well as the Institution of Engineers India’s National Design award in Environmental Engineering. He had been researching a Ganga river’s various aspects for the last 35 years. He is included in the prestigious Marquis Who’s Who in the world and is part of the interdisciplinary panel and jury member for the World Cultural Council awarding the Albert Einstein Award in Science.