Critical Issues in streamlining the Environmental management of Hydel Projects in India : 
 
India’s installed Hydel capacity has gone up 43 times from 508 MW at the time of independence to 21 700 MW in 1996-97. Hydel energy production has gone up twenty seven times from 2.52 B kWh in 1950-51 to 68.63 B kWh in 1996-97. India’s Ultimate hydel generation potential is said to be 600 B kWh per year as per the latest revised estimates. Ultimate potential for installed capacity is said to be 84 000 MW at 60% load factor. The pumped storage schemes are supposed to have additional potential of 94,000 MW. The government and other promoters are in a hurry to establish new hydropower projects. Issues like comprehensive river basin plans, options assessment, environment and social impact assessment and mitigation, transparency, accountability and participation of people are considered unnecessary roadblocks in that direction (GOI, 1999: 667-9).

3303 large dams have been constructed in India since independence. Some 700 more large dams are under construction. This has been possible only at very great national costs. Millions of Ha of forest and non-forestlands has been submerged. Rivers have died. Government has no data about how many people have been displaced in the process, but a sample survey of some 130 large dams based on government and the World Bank figures show that the figure must exceed 35 million. Even secretary of Union Ministry of Rural Development accepted that large dams have displaced some 40 million people since independence. Most of these people have not been resettled. Destruction of wild life habitats, destruction of biodiversity, destruction of rivers, serious geomorphological impacts, etc. are some other impacts about which little organized information is available.

Downstream Impacts: The Death of the River
 
Downstream impacts of large dams are one of the most neglected areas. These impacts can include the following.

• Drying up of river in non-monsoon months, leading to drying of water source for the people living on the banks of the river. 

• Stoppage of groundwater recharge in the downstream regions. 

• Salinity ingress due to stoppage of fresh water flow. 

• Such salinity ingress can destroy the existing groundwater in the region and also affect the lands on the banks of the river. 

• Pollution concentration in the downstream region. 

• Destruction of riverine and estuarine fisheries and displacement of people thereby. This is contributed both by the stoppage of freshwater flow and also by the stoppage of silt in the reservoir behind the dam. 

• Flashfloods in the downstream area are generally more destructive than the floods without dams. 

• The stoppage of downstream flow can also affect use of river for navigation for the people on the banks of the river. 

• Geomorphological impacts are also important ones to be mentioned. 

• The people in the downstream that depend on the river for bringing water for diversion agriculture in the floodplains also get deprived of this when dam is built in the upstream area. This can bring lower harvests, drops in productivity and impoverishment. (Cernea, 1997: 4) 
  
  A very good example of how the downstream impacts can get neglected is the case of Sardar Sarovar Project, which is supposed to represent the state of the art project in dam building in India. Narmada River, on which this project is under construction in Gujarat, is a monsoon fed river. 80-90% of the annual discharge in the river flows away in the monsoon months and the non-monsoon months have only 10-20% of the flow. But SSP project authorities have allocated no water for the downstream regions. In fact, Gujarat State, while presenting its case before the Narmada Water Disputes Tribunal Award, requested NWDT to allocate separate water for the downstream area. The Tribunal told Gujarat to allocate water from its share of water from the river. And Gujarat, now, has allocated no water for the 150-km of river downstream from the dam. The SSP dam will not be able to store all the water in the river in the monsoon, but the 10-15% of the annual discharge available in the non-monsoon months will certainly get stalled behind and diverted by the dam.
  
  (Source:Himanshu Thakkar, 2000. Summary of submission to the World Commission on Dams, Downloaded from International Rivers Network. For details E- Mail Cwaterp@del3.vsnl.net.in )

Actual Benefits Much Lower Than Claimed Benefits

It is now well documented that most large dams are ill planned projects even from technical, geological, hydrological, environmental and social point of view (McCully 1997; Singh, 1997; the World Bank and many others). Comprehensive river basin plans have not been made for a single river basin in India till date. The Planning for large dams generally starts with identification of sites suitable for large dams, then its benefits are postulated and thus it is justified that the large dam must be built there. Options assessment is almost never done. This is the story starting from Bhakhra to Sardar Sarovar. The results are also well known. The costs are underestimated and invariably overshoot the projected costs. The benefits are overestimated and projected benefits are almost never achieved. Social and environmental issues are the worst sufferers.
 
Sustainability of Present Capacity

"Our river valley projects like Bhakra Nangal, Damodar, Hirakud, Tungabhadra, etc. shall all remain land-marks for ever."

- Jawarharlal Nehru, at 24th Annual Meeting of CBIP, Oct. 26, 1953

The sustainability of the present hydel generating capacities is in serious question due to much larger than projected siltation rates, as can be seen from the following table. In case of most of the reservoirs, expected life is less than one third of projected life. (While not all the projects listed below have hydro components, they represent the situation of most reservoirs in India.)

Siltation Data of Selected Reservoirs

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