Opinion (Spotlight Weekly)

Sunkosi Dam Could Work Miracles For Nepal

By A.B. THAPA

Developing the Sunkosi river has become indispensable to the safety of the lives and property of millions in our region. Luckily for us, the project could provide an excellent opportunity for swift growth of our country’s beleaguered economy. Moreover, we might be able to implement the project on our own without excessively increasing the present level of foreign assistance.

Unfortunately, virtually all of us, including the donors actively engaged in the development of Nepal’s water resources, are unaware of this promise. Such lack of awareness could prove detrimental to our development efforts over the long run. Some donors generously funding the development of Nepal’s water resources are even being misled. Some of their assistance is being misused to preclude the viability of the Sunkosi and Kosi dam projects. Proper understanding of the Sunkosi project on the part of donors is very important. Only through the combined efforts of all stakeholders, including donors, can we help prevent one of the biggest water-induced disasters threatening our region.

Kosi Flood Problem

The Kosi river has shifted over 120 km east to west in the last 200 years. Fortunately, the embankments built about 50 years ago temporarily helped to check the lateral shifting. Soon, the detention basin between the two embankments on the north of the barrage at Hanumannagar is going to be filled up. After that, the embankments would be ineffective in controlling the lateral shifting of the river. It is feared after that the Kosi would shift back to its old course about 120 km away in the east. Experts are predicting that such a shift would be accompanied by enormous loss of life and property. According to them, storage dams are indispensable to averting disaster.

The Sunkosi and Kosi dams will be needed to control the river. The Sunkosi dam project would have to be completed first or else it would not be possible later on to build it on technical grounds. The idea of constructing a storage dam across the Sunkosi at Kurule is not new. Many technical teams have conducted studies in the past.

An Indian technical team was the first to conduct a reconnaissance study of the Sunkosi dam site for Kosi flood control in 1946. The team had favored the Kurule site because it appeared geologically sound and favorable to a big storage reservoir that extended in Dudhkosi and Sunkosi valleys.

A pre-feasibility study of the Sunkosi dam project for irrigation in Terai was completed in 1968 under the technical and financial assistance of the United Nations Development Program/Food and Agriculture Organization. This study also identified Kurule as the appropriate site for the Sunkosi dam linked with a tunnel to deliver the river water into the Terai. The master plan of the Kosi basin prepared under Japanese assistance in 1985 endorsed the same location for the project.

Limited External Support Needed

The main component of the Sunkosi project urgently needed for the control of floods is the dam itself. The dam height, according to the Kosi basin master plan, is expected to be between 147 meters and 195 meters. In the initial stage, the capacity of the power station could be only about 600 MW. Irrigation, expected to cover a total net area of about 300,000 hectares in Nepal, could be spread over a longer area. In this way, it would be possible to bring down the initial investment in irrigation infrastructure development and, hence, the total initial cost of the project.

Although the Sunkosi dam project is not too big, the benefits accruable to Nepal are enormous. If advantages like easy accessibility to the project site and the short distance needed for the transmission of electricity from the power house to the main national grid are also taken into account, then the total initial cost of the project would be fairly close to that of the 400-MW
Arun-3.

This implies that Nepal would be considered perfectly capable to implement on its own the Sunkosi project under external financial assistance because Nepal was qualified as competent by the donor community nearly two decades ago the Arun-3 project.

Cheap Electricity

The Sunkosi dam would be needed for flood control and the diversion tunnel to deliver water for irrigation in the Terai. There can hardly be any other substitute. Under such circumstances, about four billion units (Kwh) of firm electric energy could be generated at a relatively small additional investment. The generation cost could be only about one US cent per unit. The generation of such cheap power would have an extremely favorable impact on Nepal’s ailing industries. But this possibility has never been seriously examined either by the government or by institutions like the Federation of Nepalese Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FNCCI). The FNCCI, which is often seen raising its voice in support of the private hydropower developers, does not seem to be much concerned about finding ways of lowering the electricity tariff.

Threat to Sunkosi Project

Policy makers in Nepal are often ignorant about technical matters. So it is not surprising that loan money was used recently to conduct through a foreign consulting firm the feasibility study of the Dudhkosi dam project, which would have precluded the viable Kosi dam project and would have in the long run significantly reduced the scope of the Sunkosi project. After the completion of the study, bids were called to award the project to private developers. All these things happened after the 1997 agreement between Nepal and India, which paved the way for the general consensus that the Sunkosi and the Kosi dam projects are indispensable for the safety of millions of people in our region.

There is an urgent need to review our policy on private-sector participation in the power sector. Such review is necessary also to make sure we are not misled into taking decisions affecting critical projects like the Sunkosi and Kosi.

Nepal should pursue a policy of exploiting our water and other natural resources as far as possible to achieve rapid economic growth, which would help to raise the living standard of the common people. Exploitation of water resources alone should not be our goal. We have before us a few very glaring cases to draw lessons from. For example, Bihar, just after the independence of India, was regarded as the most prosperous state of the union. It was very rich in mineral resources.

After a half century of widespread exploitation of its vast mineral wealth, Bihar has become the poorest state of India. States like Haryana and former East Punjab in India, and former West Punjab in Pakistan have achieved highest degrees of success in raising the living standard of the people because they were able to exploit their water resources for development by building the Bhakra, Mangla and other dams.

The Sunkosi dam project can help us start efforts toward improving the economic condition of the common people. The project could work miracles for Nepal. If it is sidelined much longer, we would be inviting one of the worst water-induced disasters, accompanied by massive loss of life and property, in our region.