Delhi eyes water from Himachal dam but without checking distribution losses in the city
Fifty-year-old Jagir Singh Tomar is among the 700 families in Sirmaur district in Himachal Pradesh who would be affected by the proposed Delhi eyes water from Himachal dam but without checking distribution losses in the city Fifty-year-old Jagir Singh Tomar is among the 700 families in Sirmaur district in Himachal Pradesh who would be affected by the proposed Renuka dam on Giri, a tributary of the Yamuna river. The project, via Haryana, is designed to meet Delhi’s water demand. If it comes through Tomar will have no place to live. There is no plan to resettle the families, except for a compensation. People have started protesting against the project and the manner of land acquisition. There is confusion among states about allowing water to DelhiÀ Haryana has said unless it gets benefits, it will not let Delhi have water. Non-profits working on the Yamuna claim the dam is not required and that Delhi would fare better if it checked the existing loopholesÀ inequal distribution, leakages and water thefts, for example.
“The government’s offer is a meagre Rs 2.5 lakh per bigha (0.08 hectares) for irrigated land and Rs 50,000 for wasteland,” said Tomar who grows tomato, ginger and garlic on his five bighas and earns up to Rs 3 lakh per year. “How will I sustain my family of 10?” asked Puran Chand of Mohtu village. “The compensation will last me a year. There is no provision for a job or land elsewhere.”
The villagers have formed a Renuka Bandh Sangharsh Samiti to fight the project. Chand, its secretary, added they had earlier demanded higher compensation but now their stand was clearÀ they do not want a dam.
“Even if we agreed to give land, the compensation is peanuts compared to market rates,” said Harish Chander from Deed Bagad village, half of which would be submerged. The project also poses a threat to 49 ha of the Renuka Wildlife Sanctuary.
“The market rate of land is not less than Rs 20 lakh per bigha. If they give me land at Delhi’s rates, I will part with it”— DEEP RAM,Farmer, Mohtu village
“Grazing communities who come here with their cattle will also be affected. The government says the project will benefit Sirmaur but we don’t see how. Only the contractors the Himachal Pradesh Power Corporation Ltd (hppcl) hires for the project will benefit,” said Mahesh Kumar, sarpanch of Dadahu gram panchayat.
The director of hppcl dismissed the villagers’ objections. “The rehabilitation package given to Renuka villagers is the best in the country. In such projects, opposition is always there. We cannot help it,” said C M Walia, director of the state power corporation.
But, what about land acquisition?Section 17 (4)À The term 17 (4) dominates conversations among Mohtu villagers who congregate under a tree late afternoon
everyday. Children too in 20 of the 37 villages that Reunka will submerge know it is the urgency clause. Section 17 (4), under the Land Acquisition Act 1894, allows project officials to bypass a step that allows landowners to file objections against land acquisition.
Villagers said the state has imposed the section in the 20 villages but Walia denied the move. O N Verma, general manager of class, was more candid “It is a government project and if it has decided to acquire land, catering to objections, if any, is just formality.”
In 2004, a Supreme Court judgment had spelt out that the urgency clause was unconstitutional and should not be allowed except in special circumstances such as flood or earthquake. “A citizen’s property can be acquired in accordance with law but in the absence of real and genuine urgency, it may not be appropriate to deprive an aggrieved party of a fair and just opportunity of putting forth its objections for due consideration of the acquiring authority,” said the 2004 judgment in the case of Union of India v Krishan Lal Arneja.
How can they invoke the urgency clause when the project hasn’t yet got various forest and environment clearances and techno-economic clearance from the Central Water Commission and the Central Electricity Authority? asked Manshi Asher of Environment Research and Action Collective, a non-profit in Himachal Pradesh.
Worried about having no choice but to leave his ancestral land, Tomar said agriculture was all he knew and he cared little about Delhi’s water shortage.
Haryana wants share too The Renuka dam project was conceptualized in the 1960s and the final agreement came through in 1994 between Himachal Pradesh, Haryana, Rajasthan, Delhi and Uttar Pradesh. The agreement envisaged sharing Yamuna’s waters between these states and construction of the dam. But in February this year, the ministry of law said the 1994 agreement was not valid because Rajasthan never signed the deal.
“Haryana too is not happy with the deal,” said Manoj Misra of Delhi-based ngo Yamuna Jiye Abhiyan, “as it stated that in case of water deficit, the share of other states might reduce but that will not be the case for Delhi.” Haryana now wants a share both in the water released from Renuka and power generated as the river passes through the state.”
The Delhi Jal Board (djb), responsible for supplying drinking water to Delhi, said the 1994 agreement made it clear that Renuka’s water would be sent to Delhi. “The Central government will decide,” a board official said. Walia of hppcl addedÀ “Himachal Pradesh’s responsibility is to construct the dam and supply water. How it is distributed downstream is none of our concern.”
Delhi’s water requirement :- Delhi needs 3,637 million litres of water everyday (mld); the present supply is about 2,955 mld. Critics say distribution of this water is skewed. For instance, Lutyen’s Delhi that houses vips receives more than 300 mld and places like Mehrauli get less than 40 mld. The source of the river is Yamunotri from where it flows to the Hathnikund barrage at the Haryana-Uttar Pradesh border. There it is diverted to the Eastern Yamuna Canal in Uttar Pradesh and Western Yamuna Canal in Haryana.
The Delhi government plans to take 1,240 mld from the Renuka dam through the Western Yamuna Canal and divert it to another canal from Munak in Haryana to Haiderpur in Delhi (see map). The canal is yet to be commissioned. “Does Delhi need so much water?” asked Misra. A performance audit of the djb by the Comptroller and Auditor General of India in 2008 revealed distribution losses due to leakage of water was 40 per cent of the total supply; 15 per cent loss is acceptable as per the ministry of urban development. “In 2007, delayed repair of leaks in transmission and distribution lines led to an estimated loss of 382 million litres water,” the report said.
According to a study by the Centre for Science and Environment, a non-profit in Delhi, the city loses about 1,200 mld in leaks. This is equivalent to water supply expected from the Renuka dam. If the city can cut down its distribution losses, there will be additional water available. By 2021, the water availability will be at least 4,165 mld, including Renuka’s water supply.
If losses are 40 per cent from the existing sources and 15 per cent from Renuka, Delhi would lose 1,400 mld. This is higher than Renuka’s potential and would be 30 per cent of Delhi’s projected water needs in 2021. So, the dam, according to the study, is not required.
The djb does not agree. “It is not so much leakage as the theft of water.
Garlic from Himachal is sold in Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Delhi and Tamil Nadu. All this will stop — JYOTI BAHADUR,Farmer, Dadahu village
We cannot do anything about the unauthorized colonies that draw a lot of water,” a board official said. “We commissioned a Rs 80-lakh study to find out leakage problems in the
trunk pipeline but terminated it because there were problems with the consultant.”
Misra reiterated that damming the river was not the solution. “How can a river be revived if its key tributaries are dammed?” Besides, he added, flow in the river counters the pollution problem. If the river is dammed upstream, flow will be restricted further leading to more pollution in the river.
Power : - The dam is supposed to generate 40 mw electricity, besides supplying water
to Delhi. “The existing Giri Bata project, downstream of the proposed Renuka dam, was set up with an installed capacity of 60 mw class Except during monsoon, the project generates eight to nine mw power for about nine months a year because of lower than expected water supply,” said an executive engineer posted at the Giri Bata dam site.
How can Renuka produce 40 mw ? “Given the fact that they have to release a minimum of 1,240 mld for nine months a year to Delhi, there will never be enough water to run the turbines. And in monsoon, when the priority would be to fill up the reservoir rather than let the water go downstream, Giri Bata’s production would be affected during monsoon as well,” said a memorandum, which a group of non-profits recently submitted to the government. hppcl countered the argument and maintained the efficiency of the Giri Bata project would go up because of regulated water supply throughout the year from the Renuka reservoir.
“There would be other benefits,” said Walia. “Once we have a 24-km-long reservoir, we can always open it for tourism and water sports and earn a lot of revenue from it.”
But Tomar is not excited. “Should I give up land, agriculture and living so that people can enjoy water sports?”
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