Environment ministry does not evaluate cumulative environmental impact of multiple dams in a region. Funded by the project proponent, the EIA report of a project too downplays the environmental costs, reports M Rajshekhar Housed in the ministry of environment and forests is a quasi-independent body whose job is to scrutinise every hydel-power project for environmental damage. In its six years, the hydel environmental assessment committee (EAC) has evaluated 262 hydropower plants and irrigation projects, according to a February 2013 study by the South Asia Network on Dams, Rivers and People, a Delhi-based antidam organisation; it hasn’t rejected a single one. The prospect of a similar rate of clearance in Arunachal is alarming researchers, activists and residents, who say projects are being cleared on an individual basis, without fully understanding the possible cumulative environmental fallout of such a large build-up. Take what will happen to the Lohit, which flows out of Arunachal and into the Brahmaputra, when the Lower Demwe Hydro Electric Project on it switches on. According to the project’s environmental impact assessment (EIA) report, the Lohit's flow is around 463 cubic metres per second (cumecs) in winter, 832 cumecs in summer and 2,050 cumecs in the rains. (A 3 cumecs flow is akin to a Tata Nano passing you every second.) This will change once the dam comes up. For up to 20 hours a day, says the report, the dam will trap the river, releasing just 35 cumecs. The remaining will be released to spin the turbines only when demand for electricity rises in the evening. At that time, the river's flow will expand to 1,729 cumecs. As the reservoir empties out, the river will again shrink to 35 cumecs. River flows ebb and rise over months. “But now, what was an annual variation will now be a daily variation,” says MD Madhusudan, a biologist with Mysorebased Nature Conservation Foundation. And this is from just one dam; there are 153 dams coming up on Arunachal’s eight rivers. To gauge their combined impact, rifle through the EIA report for the Jaypee Group's Lower Siang Project. It says if waters from the three terminal dams on the Lohit, Subansiri and the Siang rivers reach the floodplains at the same time, the Brahmaputra's height will fluctuate daily by 2-3 metres, as far as 65 km downstream. This unpredictability of flow will affect fishing communities and those farming in the Brahmaputra's floodplains. There are other concerns. On the Lohit, for example, the distance between six dams is 1 km, 9.5 km, 1.8 km, 3.8 km and 1.8 km, respectively. There are no studies on what such clustering portends for a river or how they will behave during a quake. This part of the country is rocked by an earthquake over 8 on the Richter scale once every 100 years or so. “Now, there will be a series of cascading dams, each with a small reservoir, on each river,” says Chandan Mahanta, a professor of environmental engineering and engineering geology at IIT Guwahati. “These are things people have not seen. We need more simulation.” “The issues surrounding these dams are very different from those relating to dams in the plains,” adds Dulal Goswami, a former member of the hydel EAC. “There, the main issues are relocation, rehabilitation and inundation. Here, the issues are seismicity, landslides and flashfloods.” SCIENTIFIC NORMS? These issues are not getting the attention they deserve from the ministry. For instance, the ministry has set the minimum distance between two dams at 1 km; the minimum flow of a river at all times at 20% of its lowest seasonal flow; and it is evaluating project impact for 10 km, upstream and downstream. How did it arrive at these standards? Jayanthi Natarajan, the minister of environment and forests, did not respond to an email questionnaire on the issue. But a senior hydel EAC member, who did not want to be named, says normsetting is a problem. “The power ministry has the Central Electricity Authority (CEA) advising it. The ministry of environment has nothing,” he says. “The EAC has just worked out some (hydel) norms on its own.” At times, members of hydel EAC are also involved with private projects, raising the issue of conflict of interest. Then, the primary source of information about a project’s environmental costs is its own EIA report. Funded by the project proponent, these inevitably downplay environmental costs. In 2012, the Nature Conservation Foundation assessed the EIA report of Bhilwara Energy's Nyamjang Chhu project, prepared by two agencies. “The EIA report lists 16 fish species by Wapcos (one agency) and 16 by the other agency. Surprisingly, only 3 species are common,” it says. And the downstream impact does not get much of a discussion. The ministry also does not do cumulative assessments for a river or a region. The unidentified hydel EAC member quoted above says the EAC can only suggest one to the minister, which it has not. “A cumulative assessment would delay all project clearances by two years,” he says. Limited information on water flows for most Arunachal rivers increases the difficult of conducting an objective cumulative assessment. “The CWC (Central Water Commission) had not studied all the major rivers and their tributaries,” says Kameswara Rao, executive director, PricewaterhouseCoopers. With data available only for the last three to four years, most companies are resorting to, in Rao’s words, “borrowed hydrology” — calculating water flow, etc, by looking at the flow in the major river. Adds Goswami: “If a dam’s hydrology has been overstated, it will not be as profitable as envisaged.” This is why, he says, the EIA studies cannot be done by project proponents. DOWNSTREAM CONCERNS One cost of not addressing these concerns beforehand is an increase in disputes. Take NHPC's Lower Subansiri Project, coming up near the Assam border in the lower reaches of the Subansiri. It is causing large worries in Assam, where protestors have held up work on the dam for over a year now. Their concerns stem from the 1950 quake, after which landslides had blocked the river's path very close to the Lower Subansiri project site. For three days, the water backed up. When it burst through, it devastated downstream Assam. And yet, the lack of downstream studies has meant no public hearings were held to address the concerns of downstream populations. “It is ridiculous,” says Goswami. “Assam doesn't feature in these studies at all.” Or take the river flows. According to the EIA report for Lower Demwe, if no minimum flows are maintained, the dam can generate peaking power for 5.4-8.3 hours a day. However, if it has to release 20% of the water as an environmental flow, this drops to 4.3-5.4 hours. The Association of Arunachal Power Producers has written to the ministry of power objecting to the EAC’s insistence on 20-30% being the minimum environmental flow, saying this will reduce power capacity and generation by 15-25%. The EAC official says these questions will have to be resolved politically. “Do we want peaking power or normal riverine flows?” A political argument put forward for building many dams in the north-east, and quickly, is China. In August 2010, former environment minister Jairam Ramesh told the Rajya Sabha that the dams also had “strategic importance”. “If we don’t build dams on the Siang river, our claim from China will weaken.” However, many dams have been allotted even on rivers that, unlike the Siang, originate in India and flow into China. Also, “prior use was discredited long ago,” says Philippe Cullet, a professor of international environmental law at London’s School of Oriental And African Studies. “The whole point of the negotiations leading to the UN Watercourses Convention 1997 was to move away from both the ‘Harmon doctrine’ (upper riparian claiming to do whatever it wants) and from prior use (lower riparian claiming full share of the water) in favour of a balanced approach where both the upper and lower riparian could find something that would match their expectations.” While this convention is still not in force, he adds, its basic principles are widely recognised as being international customary law.