NGOs, INGOs And Nepal's Water Resources

By Dr. AB Thapa

An interesting article related to Nepal’s water resources had been published under the heading “ The untapped might of Himalayas” by Stanley A Weiss, Founder and Chairman of Business Executives for National Security, a nonpartisan Organization based in Washington in “ The Kathmandu Post” on May 12, 2005. He considers that Nepal could turn its water into white gold if three conditions are satisfied. They are building of political trust between nations, donor banks such as the World Bank must continue aid projects helping Nepal to realize its hydropower ambition, and linking the power grids of the seven-nation South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation.

Mr. Stanley A. Weiss must be thanked for the interest he had shown to analyze Nepal’s water resources development problems. It is true that the first two conditions referred to in his article as precondition are really very important for the development of Nepal’s water resources. However, the linking of power grid of the seven-nation South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation might not be at the top in the list of priority tasks because Nepal would be dealing almost exclusively with India in hydropower trading. As a result, our main focus would naturally be going to be on linking of our future mega-hydropower with India’s load centers.

Misleading Role of NGOs and INGOs

At present Nepal is facing with several impediments to proper development of our country’s water resources for domestic use as well as export. It is feared that our water resources could even prove to be a great liability to the nation if proper attention is not immediately paid to overcome these impediments. Among such impediments not less significant is the misleading role of NGOs and INGOs operating in our country. A typical example could be the stand taken by NGOs and INGOs on India’s river linking plan that involves Nepal’s rivers also. NGOs INGOs are seen to be vehemently opposing India’s plan to purchase regulated flow of the rivers flowing inside Nepal for diversion into the link canal. Shockingly the same NGOs and INGOs are now completely silent when a private developer is about to build the West Seti storage dam that would provide India regulated flow of that river for free. The NGOs and INGOs are completely indifferent to the fact that the link canal drawing water from the proposed West Seti dam to supply to India would be submerging vast area of cultivated lands of Nepal’s Western Terai Moreover, the type of high dam proposed for the West Seti is not yet fully tested so it could be unsafe to build in haste such dam without scrupulous further research studies.

Downstream Benefit and Link Canal

Recently news are appearing in the Indian news media that the Government of India wants to obtain the consent of Nepal (also Bhutan and Bangladesh) through a revenue sharing pact to divert water of the major rivers for irrigation across the India. For delivery of such water India plans to build an extensive network of link canal. . Needless to say that the storage dams proposed to be built in Nepal in future would have to play the decisive role for this type of grandiose project to succeed. Until now India was seen to be hesitating to accept the idea of buying water stored in the reservoirs proposed to be built in Nepal. Now India itself appears to be taking the initiative to find a way to share benefits accruable from the use of water received from Nepal.

The above reporting provides a good ground to hope that India might be persuaded to accept a new policy to pave the way to give the regulated water supplied to India from the storage reservoirs proposed to be built in Nepal the same type of treatment as the United States is now giving to the regulated water of the Columbia river supplied by Canada. The Columbia River Treaty has granted the Canada the right to recover 50% benefits accruing from the use of the Columbia river water in the United States virtually in perpetuity.

Severest Blow to Nepal’s Interest

The West Seti high dam project is among the very few schemes in Nepal , which have been extensively studied. It has two major components. They are the irrigation and power. A study at feasibility level on power was carried out by SOGREAH of France, whereas the Karnali Multipurpose Project study fully covers the irrigation component of this project. Feasibility level study of the Karnali Multipurpose Project had been done thrice in the past. One of the main objectives of the latest feasibility study was to involve India in the studies to determine the magnitude of the irrigation benefits accruable to that country from the regulated flow of the Karnali River and obviously it also denotes the regulated flow of the West Seti River which is a tributary of the Karnali River.

There are ominous news reported in our news media that concerns our water resources. It is reported that the SMEC ( a private engineering consulting firm ) has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) in India opening the way for the purchase of electricity from the proposed West Seti hydro-plant in the far western region of Nepal. It would be the severest blow to the interest of our country if the private developer is allowed to take up the implementation of the West Seti project ignoring the irrigation and other downstream benefits. The downstream net irrigation benefit accruable to Nepal could be far exceeding the net power benefit Nepal could hope to get. It has been explained about it in the WECS bulletin dated May, 1995 (Volume 6, Number 1&2).

Submergence of Nepalese Territory

The Girjapur barrage across the Karnali river located 8.8 km downstream of Katarnia Ghat railway station of North Eastern Railway in India would be drawing regulated flow of the West Seti. There are two irrigation canals taking off from the Girjapur barrage . On the left is the Saryu canal running to the east beyond the Banganga river and on the right is the Link Canal connected with the Sarda Sahayak canal planned to irrigate about 2 million ha of lands. At present only the right bank canal is operational because the dry season flow of the Karnali river is quite insufficient for both the canals and there are insurmountable technical difficulties to utilize the monsoon flow of this river. The year round operation of the Saryu canal depends entirely on availability of the regulated flow from the proposed storage reservoirs in Nepal. The construction of the Saryu canal, that started a long time ago, is still continuing at a snail's pace perhaps due to uncertainty about the date when the West Seti project would be ready for operation. Nevertheless, it appears that the Saryu canal could be made operational at short notice after the completion of the West Seti Storage Project because most of the structures of the Saryu canal might be already ready. After that our people near the border area would be forced to live virtually in swamps throughout the year.

The Saryu canal project consists of a canal network that connects the head regulators of the barrages across the Saryu (Babai river) , West Rapti and Rohini ( Banganga river). A link channel 48.4 km long taking off from the left bank of the Girjapur barrage outfalls into the Saryu river just upstream of a barrage across it. A link canal 56 km long taking off from the left bank of the Saryu river outfalls into the West Rapti river just upstream of the Laxmanpur barrage. Beyond that a 125 km long canal taking off from the left bank of the West Rapti river extends up to the Banganga river.

The total length of the Saryu canal running almost parallel to Indo-Nepal border is about 230 km. In the original design the barrage across the Saryu river was at a location about 328 meters to the south of the railway bridge at Nanpara. Later, the design was modified and the location of the barrage was shifted 10 km to the north from the original site. The longitudinal gradient of the Saryu canal has been reduced to a minimum. It is only one meter on a stretch of 9 km. The adoption of such extremely mild slope permitted the alignment of the canal to be pushed as far as possible to the north very close to Indo-Nepal border specially in its middle and lower reaches.

Normally siphons are provided to deliver canal water across a river. A much higher average slope of the canal is required for the operation of this type of cross drainage structure, which has to operate under pressurized condition. A free flow hydraulic regime needs to be maintained at the river crossing if the average gradient of the canal is to be reduced. For reducing the average slope of the Saryu canal an altogether a different type of structures has been devised, which at first glance drives anybody crazy. Barrages have been built across the rivers to elevate the river water to such a level that would allow free passage of canal water across the river into the canal taking off from the other side of the river The contentious Laxmanpur barrage is one of such structures devised to deliver the water from the Girjapur barrage across the West Rapti river..

It would be necessary to maintain all the time pond water upstream of the barrage above certain fixed level to keep the Saryu canal running at desired capacity. Thus the pond would always be full, with the result that a sizeable area of lands in Nepalese territory could remain perpetually submerged. When the river is in flood, the water would be spreading out onto the lands that were never before regarded prone to flooding.

The Saryu canal is expected to cross innumerable small rivers and drains on its way. Embankments and dikes are needed to train these drains and small rivers for the protection of the Saryu canal. These river training structures could also result in widespread flooding inside Nepal where the canal route is close to the border.

Why West Seti Dam Could Be Unsafe?

The West Seti Project will have a 195-m high concrete face rockfill dam ( CFRD ). This type of dams are found to be very competitive in cost but until recent time they were considered risky for heights above 150 meters.

The CFRD is very sensitive to settlement and deformation of the rock-fill supporting the upstream face. These deformations produce movements of the concrete slab joints by opening them and if the movements exceed certain limits then the resulting leakage is difficult to control. The deformations of CFRD for dynamic loading are even more difficult to evaluate. In the Michigan Convention of ASCE in 1985 on CFRD papers were presented to establish Earthquake Severity Index (ESI) with relative vertical settlement. In the ICOLD meeting of 1988 it was suggested that future research should be focused to correlate ESI and the relative settlement as function of yield acceleration.

There is no Precedent

Needless to say that there is a need for great caution in adopting very high CFRD. According to J. Barry Cooks, Consultant USA (Development in High CFRD, Hydropower & Dams, Issue Four 1997), this type of dams are of empirical design and based on precedent design and experience. Unfortunately only very recently relatively high CFRD have been introduced.

The proposed developer of the West Seti Project has cited as precedent in their report two CFRD close to the West Seti dam in height. It is claimed that they are already in good service. They are the Tiensingquiao of China with a height of 180 meters and Aguamilpa of Mexico with a height of 185.5 meters. Unfortunately both these CFRD can not be satisfactory example to justify the selection of CFRD for the West Seti Project. The Tiensigquiao dam of China might be still under construction. According to the original schedule the dam was expected to be completed towards the May of 1999. So nobody might be yet knowing how that dam would be going to perform. The Aguamilpa reservoir was first filled in August 1993. Since then two abnormal peak seepage values have been observed. These events were of great concern, and several hypothesis were made to explain this behavior although none has been satisfactory. Now underwater inspections are in progress to try to identify any factor, which could explain the observed behavior.

(Dr. Thapa writesOpinion on water resource)