A Valley is a Terrible Thing to Waste

Last week, the Groundwater Up team headed out of town, to see some of the far flung places that are sourcing Delhi’s water.

Tehri

Our first stop was Tehri Dam where we were accompanied by our friend Vimal Bhai. Tehri Dam, in Uttaranchal, currently supplies municipal water to Delhi. At first, looking at the reservoir- a calm, huge body of water nestled between the mountains- it was difficult to believe that there were villages and fields lying as far as 150 meters below the surface. But when we traveled by boat over the former village of Cham, we saw the top branches of large trees piercing the surface of the water and the pointed peak of a temple. At Cham and at New Tehri Town we had the chance to interview some of the people who had been displaced and to sit in on a meeting of people fighting for full compensation for their lost homes. The persistence and resilience of the men and women we met was inspiring.

Renuka

From Tehri Dam we travelled west to Himachal and Renuka Valley, where a proposed dam to provide more water to Delhi has just received its environmental clearance. Based out of Dadahu, we traveled to several of the villages within the dam’s submergence zone led by Puran Chand, one of the people leading the fight against Renuka dam. Seeing the fertile fields, lush forests, the many homes and self-sufficient lifestyles of the Sirmour district helped us to understand what had truly been lost at Tehri. And, having seen the scale of the Tehri, and after having heard the stories of people in Cham and New Tehri Town, we better understood how high the stakes are in Renuka.

(Map taken from www.hampi.in)

Questions

We returned to Delhi, full of stories and knowing we had found a key piece of our film. Some of the questions we are tackling are:

• Does Delhi need to rely on dams?
• Can Delhiites live on the water resources currently available by fixing infrastructure, harvesting rainwater, decreasing consumption and pollution?
• Who benefits from the building of dams- where is the money coming from and where is it going?