Illegal mining along the Haridwar stretch of the Ganga has emerged as a big threat, hasn't it?
I have already written to the Uttarakhand CM (Ramesh Pokhriyal Nishank) and spoken to him asking him to take action. The state government is empowered to act and it has not unfortunately, for understandable reasons. The mining lobby enjoys high-level political patronage. If the state government continues to be recalcitrant, we may issue them a showcause notice under the Environment Protection Act (EPA).
What explains the generous clearances of dams along the upper reaches of the Ganga?
If I were the CM of Uttarakhand, I'd also feel that my major natural resource is water.
And your ministry approves many of them?
Not all dams have to come to my ministry for clearances. I do not take an ideological position on dams. There are ways to build a dam that is ecologically benign. Many of these projects were not accompanied by a cumulative environment assessment. Had they been done, much of the criticism could have been avoided. We have stopped work on some projects, especially along the Bhagirathi, where work was allowed to continue despite poor planning...we have abandoned the 600 MW Loharinag Pala dam on which Rs 2,000 crore has been spent. We are trying to take corrective measures. Unfortunately, all this should have been done earlier. We are doing a cumulative assessment with a just-released report by IIT Roorkee on the impact of 69 dams along the Bhagirathi and Alaknanda basins (source rivers for the Ganga). On its basis, we have re-stipulated the clearance of the Vishnugarh-Pipalkoti dam by increasing its minimum environmental flow (amount of water needed in a watercourse to maintain a healthy ecosystem) from 3 cumecs (cubic metre per second) to 15 to keep the water flowing through the year. We'll take a fresh view on other projects too. Read the full report here.
Source: Debarshi Dasgupta, Outlook India.
