Opinion (Spotlight Weekly)

Kosi Canal Navigation: The Economy

By A.B. THAPA

The 1997 Indo-Nepal agreement to jointly conduct a detailed feasibility study of the Kosi Navigation Canal to be ultimately developed as a part of the Kosi High Dam Project is indeed a landmark event. The proposed navigation canal could open up boundless new opportunities for rapid expansion of our country's trade and industrial development. Such expansion is indispensable for faster economic growth, which, for its part, is an essential prerequisite for improving the living conditions of the vast number of our people below the line of poverty. Unfortunately, we are very slow to realize the significance of the proposed canal navigation.

In future, Nepal would continue to experience great difficulties in transportation of goods to the seaport because of our landlocked status. Free and unhindered access to the sea to facilitate trade and transit has been a cherished dream of the country. Inland waterway transportation linking our country with the seaport would be ideally suited to relieve our difficulties in handling goods in transit through India. Yet the facilitation of the transit problem alone cannot be our goal. Needless to say, the waterway transportation cost must be at the same time fairly low by comparison with other modes such as roadway or railway to be attractive for development. If we made a swift study of the recent trend in the development of the inland waterways particularly in Europe, it is not difficult to notice that the Kosi canal navigation would be the best choice to take care of our economic concerns. In course of future feasibility study of the Kosi canal waterway, we should be all the time guided by the vast experience gathered by Europe in the field of planning and operation of artificial waterways for navigation.

Basic Types of Waterways

Fundamentally, waterways fall into three categories: natural rivers, canalized rivers, and artificial canals. On natural rivers, navigation requires continued efforts to retain the channel in a predetermined course by stabilization of banks and bed, by elimination of side channels, and by easing major bends to obtain a channel of uniform cross section. On canalized rivers, navigation is facilitated by constructing locks that create a series of steps, the length of which depends on the natural gradient of the valley and on the rise at each lock. On artificial canals, navigation can depart from natural river valleys and pass through hills and watersheds, crossing over valleys and streams along an artificial channel, the banks and sometimes the bed of which need protection against erosion. The route of an artificial canal can be selected to provide faster travel on long-level pounds (stretch between locks), with necessary locks grouped either as a staircase with one chamber leading directly to another or as a flight with short intervening pounds.

Early Canal Era in Europe

In Europe, the canal navigation era started toward the end of the 17th century. France took the lead in integrating its national waterway system further by forging the missing links. In the north the Saint-Quentin Canal, with a 5.6-km tunnel, opened in 1810, linking the North Sea and the Schelds and Lys systems with the English Channel via the Somme and with Paris and Le Havre via the Oise and Seine. The Rhine- Rhone Canal, opened in 1834, provided a direct north-to-south route. The Sambre-Oise Canal linked the French canal system with the Belgian network via the Meuse.

In Germany in the late 17th and early 18th centuries, the three great rivers, the Elb, Oder, and Weser, were linked by canal. The Ludwig Canal, forming part of the Rhine-Main-Danube route, was opened in 1840. A nationwide Russian canal system connecting the Baltic and Caspian seas via the Neva and Volga rivers became navigable in 1718. In the 19th century, Russia made connections between the heads of navigation of its great rivers, the Volga, Dnepr, Don, Dvina, and Ob.

Waterway in Competition with Railway

With the development of rail transport in the 19th century, canals declined as the dominant carriers of freight in the United States and Britain. In continental Europe, such adverse impact was not noticeable because the navigation canals were larger. Wherever the canals were small, they were enlarged. To meet competition from road transportation, with its greater flexibility and higher speeds, water transport has in its advantage the capacity for larger units thus there was tremendous rise in size of the vessels. As a result, the 300-ton barges operating economically early in the last century have been replaced by crafts as large as 1,350 tons and more. In Europe, push tows normally operate with fewer than six barges, but on the Mississippi, with its deep channel, a push tow may aggregate 40,000 tons, an assembly of 40 barges being controlled by one 9,000 horsepower push tug. On the Ohio River, the original 600-foot lock chambers were lengthened to 1,200 feet to obviate double lockage. The development of canal waterways continued in Europe and North America in the 19th and 20th centuries.

Modern Waterway Engineering

Despite modern technological advances in air and ground transportation, inland waterways continue to fill a vital role and, in many areas, to grow substantially. The ongoing construction of the giant Three Gorges project in China expected to further develop Yangze river navigation and recently in 1992 the completion of the construction of the Main-Danube link canal can also be cited as the most recent examples of the continued importance of the inland navigation. For many types of commodities, particularly such bulk commodities as grains, coal, and ore, inland waterway transport is still far more economical than any other kind of transport. Although very large capital investment is required to modernize existing inland waterways systems and for new construction, water transport has demonstrated competitive strength as a carrier for commodities in the movement of which the time factor is not of prime importance. Thus, it is hardly surprising that modernized inland waterways, using the latest navigational aids and traction methods and traversing the great land masses of North America, Europe, and Asia, play an important economic role.

Surge in Building Navigation Canals

The primary physical restriction is that vessels cannot travel through water at speeds possible for road vehicles or railway wagons. Waterways must provide larger tonnage units than those possible on road or rail in order to be competitive. Modern waterway engineering, therefore, is directed toward providing channels suitable for larger vessels to travel faster by reducing delays at locks or from darkness and other natural hazards. In the last century, existing small canals were upgraded and many new and much larger canals were built in Europe. In Germany, the 467-km Mittelland Canal was opened in 1938 that completed the east-west link in a system of about 11,265 km of inland waterways, extending from the Dortmund-Ems Canal east of the Rhine to the Elbe north of Magdeburg. The Nord-Sud Canal (or Elbe-Seitenkanal) was completed in 1976. This canal leaves the Elbe about 32 km above Hamburg and, running south, joins the ittelland Canal near Wolfsburg, reaching a total of 114 km and shortening the route between Hamburg and the Ruhr by 214 km. The Main-Danube canal connecting the Rhine with the Black Sea was completed in 1992.

Many of France's low-capacity canals are being raised to the 1,350-ton standard. A major development planned in the 1970s in cooperation with West Germany was the construction to this standard of the North Sea-Mediterranean waterway via the canalized Rhone and Rhine rivers. The Rhine has been navigable between Basel and Rheinfelden since 1934. In the Netherlands, the extensive canal system based on large natural rivers and serving the ports of Rotterdam and Amsterdam has required relatively small improvement. The Juliana Canal was built in 1935 to bypass the Meuse River between Roermond and Maastricht and it was further improved after Second World War. The Twente Canal opened in 1936.

In the former Soviet Union, navigation played a major role in the country's economy. The Volga-Don Canal, 100.8-km in length, was completed in 1952. The Moscow-Volga Canal, built between 1932 and 1937, runs 128 km from the Volga to the Moskva River at Moscow. Among other important navigation canals are the 203-km canal connecting different systems enabling to link Baltic with the Black Sea, the White Sea- Baltic Canal built between 1931 and 1933.

A Lesson To Be Learnt

We can draw extremely valuable lessons for our Kosi canal navigation planning from the recent and past experiences of the European countries. Unfortunately, India, in the past, did not pay attention to developments taking place in the field of canal navigation. As a result, the navigation component of the Durgapore barrage project ended in a complete failure. This project taken up for construction as late as 1950s was under the Damodar Valley Corporation, an Indian model of the famous TVA of the USA. The left bank canal, 120 km in length, was designed to permit navigation by small barges only 250 ton in capacity. It had been established since a long time that such small barges would have difficulties to compete with the railways. Apart from it, the poundage too was very small. There are 22 locks in a stretch of just 161 km. Because of these drawbacks, the canal has remained unused for navigation. Fortunately now it seems India has realized her mistakes. Those matters related with economy have been fully taken care of in the design of the navigation component of the recently built Farakka barrage.

The navigation component of the Farakka barrage has been designed paying full attention to the present global trends with respect to size. The bed width of the 37.5 km long feeder canal is 150 m. The channel depth at full supply level is 6 m. The navigation lock has two chambers, each 25.15 meters wide and 180.7 meters long. The lock system is adequate for barge up to 1,500-ton capacity. Provision has been made for adding a second lock at future stage.

While conducting the feasibility study of the Kosi navigation canal, we should take full advantage of the vast experience Continental Europe has gained in the field of inland navigation. We should not allow the Durgapore navigation canal mistake to be repeated. The size of the Kosi navigation canal and its related structures such as the lock system should be determined in conformity with the size already adopted by India in design of the Farakka barrage navigation system which corresponds to the recommended size in Europe.