Press Note: Delhi’s Greed for Water Won’t Be Allowed to Drown the Himalayas, Say Local Villagers in Malhaan, Himachal Pradesh, India.

August 27th, 2010.

Malhaan is a 3 hour walk from Dadahu, a small town in the Sirmaur District of Southern Himachal Pradesh. No roads go to Malhaan and the nearest bus stop is a 1.5 hour walk. Despite the distance from a road, this neatly tucked away village is a thriving alternative to large scale economic development. Farmers in Malhan are earning neat sums of money from cash crops like ginger and tomatoes, while maintaining a healthy diet that depends on traditionally organic and home grown vegetables, grains, and dals. I don’t intend to romanticize peoples’ lives in Malhaan because that is not an “objective” point of view, according to some academics, but Malhaan’s share of troubles don’t include Dengue epidemics, or contaminated water. Does this ring a bell at all, Delhi?

Malhaan also has a variety of fruit trees in bloom every season, from mango to guava and jamun to pomegranate. Fields in Malhaan are ancestrally irrigated with water channeled from natural mountain sources. Further, as is the case in severalother parts of India, Malhaan maintains traditional water powered mills (chakkis of a different kind) that grind all kinds of grain without using any electricity, depending instead on the energy of flowing water. These are only some of the wonderfully sustainable features of Malhaan. As a Dilliwala who has visited Malhaan twice I will stress this: don’t be surprised that we walked 3 hours to get to Malhaan, but the family I stayed with has a refrigerator for cold water as well as a DVD player.

Though, I have heard very few complaints about life from the people of Malhaan, one in particular shocks me. Roads and government dispensaries are what Kanta Devi and others in Malhaan demand, but instead they stand outraged because their survival is threatened by a dam reservoir that will submerge them along with 33 similar villages in the Sirmaur district of Himachal Pradesh. I am outraged; I think we should all be. The Renukaji Dam project has been threatening to becomea dam just outside Dadahu, Himachal Pradesh. It will create a reservoir of water in the Giri river to send 23 cubic meters per second of water to Delhi for 9 months of the year, once it is build. Construction of the dam has not begun but land acquisition has, and several villages remain under article 17(4) of the Land Acquisition act, the Urgency Clause.

The Renuka dam was going to be 148m in height, but according to local Sirmauri activist Puran Chand HPPCL (dam builders) recently reduced the planned height of the dam. This reduction in height may sound like good news for those being displaced, but local activist Puran Chand explains that by bringing down the height of the dam, the Himachal Pradesh Power Corporation is only trying to get previously rejected environmental clearances passed.

How? Well a shorter dam means fewer trees will be submerged, which is great if you want environmental clearance. This will not change the kind of loss that submergence will cause, the families that will be displaced or ecology destroyed. The Himalayas are an ecologically sensitive and valuable region, blasting the mountains to make tunnels for the dam- injures mountains, water sources, everyones’ lives, India and the world.

Are you still wondering why we as Dilliwalas or anyone else should care about this dam, or why should we oppose this ‘development’, especially if people in Delhi need this water? In an open letter to Delhi’s Chief Minister Sheila Dixit, prominent social activists, experts, and intellectuals in Delhi opposed the Renuka Dam on several grounds.

Water losses in Delhi amount to approx. 40% of the supply, and the letter recommends that this be reduced to the technically feasible 10%, instead of building the Renuka dam. Delhi does not need any additional water from out of state sources, till it has
exhausted its own resources, especially in light of the recent incident at Muradnagar where local farmers took control of the water supply by refusing to send it to Delhi from the Ganga Canal. Such incidents will happen again if Delhi continues to behave like a parasite.

Dependable alternatives to augment Delhi’s water supply exist in the form ofreducing water consumption, reducing concretization, increasing tree cover,reviving old baolis and collecting rainwater or putting it back into the ground. There is a tremendous unexplored potential for groundwater recharge in the city of Delhi.

When we decide that it is ok to destroy a valley (1600 ha in this case), we’re not just displacing local villages like Malhaan or drowning lots of trees, but we’re also losing a whole culture of sustainability that we could be learning from. Everything is ecologically connected. Ecology is a fine balance of different elements. The more we build dams and stop the flow of rivers and dry them up, the more we kill biodiversity and let nature and thus peoples’ lives fall prey to BJP vs. Congress and local politics, prey to the greed for money or a name that is eminent.

Even those of us who claim to care are chopping off the very branch that we are sitting on when we admit defeat or see no success in struggle and thus refuse to fight for people or the environment.

If we want to threaten food security and water quality, then let’s build a dam that will never be as efficient as a gharat! You may not believe me, but our lives depend more on the existence of river fish (they die when we build a dam), than they do on washing cars, making a good name for ourselves or even just fighting the sexy fights.

A few days ago, local thekedars from within Sirmaur installed yellow and white cement markers (bhurjis) amongst the fertile fields and mountains of Malhaan to mark the NEW AND REDUCED water level indicators for the Renuka dam reservoir. According to Kanta Devi, local thekedars came to install these markers in secret. Some markers remained yet to be installed.

The 27thof August 2010 was a different story. According to Kanta Devi and Vikramji, almost the entire village of Malhaan, men, women and children came together to oppose thekedars putting in reservoir level markers for the dam! This is a small victory for the people of Sirmaur who are struggling to take a stand on this parasitic project. Malhaan will not let Delhi’s unjustified greed kill their 300 year old mango trees or destroy theirlives. What a pleasant thought!

Authored by Tarini Manchanda, 9350163480, mtarini@gmail.com

June 30 2010
To

Smt Sheila Dixit

Chief Minister of Delhi

3, Motilal Nehru Place, New Delhi 110001

cmdelhi@nic.in

Sub: Renuka Dam and Delhi

Respected Smt Sheila Dixit ji,

The Delhi government has been promoting and funding the controversial 148 m high Renuka Dam in Sirmaur District of Himachal Pradesh. This dam on river Giri, a tributary of Yamuna River is basically meant to supply water to Delhi. The Rs 3900 crores (2006 price line) project is to be funded with 90% of the money coming from the Centre. In fact the Delhi government has already paid the Himachal Pradesh Power Corporation Limited (HPPCL) a sum of Rs. 215 crore for land acquisition and displacement related to this Renuka dam from which Delhi hopes to get 23 cubic meters per second water for nine post-monsoon months. We the citizens and groups of Delhi (some of us recently visited the valley) after study of the project and Delhi’s water situation would like to raise the following points:

1.                   Avoidable losses According to a number of studies, including a recent ASSOCHAM[1] study and also the statements of Delhi Jal Board, water losses in Delhi during transmission and distribution are 35-40%, which should be no more than 10-15% even by developing country standards. 23% of the water supply connections remain unmetered. Most of the bulk water meters of the Delhi Jal Board have not been functioning for many years, so a disintegrated analysis as to where these losses are going is not possible. This state of affairs has been known to exist for over a decade, but there is no change in this state of affairs. Why is the DJB not able to install functioning bulk water meters at various inlets, including upto the colony level inlets? Why is the DJB not able to reduce the losses? If Delhi could reduce the losses from 40% to technically feasible 10%, the water saved would be almost the same quantity that Delhi hopes to get from the proposed Renuka dam at far less costs and impacts.

Similarly, why is Delhi not taking other possible demand side management options to discourage avoidable misuse of water? Here it is equally important to note that Delhi has been using its current water supply in a most inequitable way. While the vast majority of the population struggles to get water for their daily basic needs, there are islands that use water most wastefully. This is the known state of affairs for many years and Delhi government has achieved precious little improvement in this situation.  Sooner, rather than later, we need to realize that Delhi cannot keep demanding more water for itself from far-off places when there are competing and justifiable demands on that water from local people.

2.                   Non-essential activities Delhi is basically dependent on water imported from long distances. Despite this a lot of avoidable water-intensive non essential activities are allowed to continue in Delhi, including licensed and other water bottling plants (including by the DJB and Railways), golf courses, water parks and so on. How can Delhi justify demands for more water from long distances when such non-essential water guzzling activities are allowed to go on here?

3.                   Rainwater harvesting Even as lip service is being paid and massive amounts spent ritualistically every year in advertisements, why there is so little progress on the ground in achieving Rain Water Harvesting (RWH) in Delhi? What proportion of Government (Centre, State and city government) buildings, embassies, commercial buildings, offices, malls, multiplexes, colleges, schools, institutional buildings, road surfaces, flyovers, parks and such other open spaces have installed RWH systems? Why should they all not be given say a two-year time limit to achieve this, failure in the end inviting punitive measures[2]? Without achieving such measures, can Delhi justify demanding more water from outside? Should not Delhi be protecting its local water systems of tanks, baolis, lakes and so on before it starts looking for additional water from far-off regions? Why is Delhi allowing the local water systems to be systematically destroyed year after year? The recent incident at Muradnagar where local farmers took over the control of the water supply to Delhi from the Ganga Canal is one of series of such incidents in the past where upstream demands have held Delhi’s water use hostage. Such incidents underscore the need for Delhi to manage its water within limits that depend largely on local sources of water including rainwater harvests.

4.                   Groundwater over use and recharge It is well known that Delhi uses (as in 2004, it would have  increased thereafter) about 480 Million Cubic Meters of Groundwater per annum, which is about 170% of annual recharge potential amounting to 280 MCM. These groundwater use figures are likely to be conservative estimates. The actual recharge potential is likely to be less than this considering the rapid pace at which we are destroying local water bodies, the Ridge, the floodplain and other recharge systems. However, considering the floodplains, Ridge and an extensive concrete built up area, there is huge unexplored recharge potential and Delhi government is taking very little effective action to achieve that potential. Is there any justification for Delhi demanding additional water from far-off sources before it realizes this huge potential, which may actually provide greater storage space in underground aquifers than proposed dams like Renuka may provide?

5.                   Wastewater treatment and Recycle Delhi is currently producing at least 800 MGD of wastewater (DJB claims to supply 800 MGD plus additional local groundwater use of at least 200 MGD, thus total water use of 1000 MGD, of as per standard assumption, 80% would be returning as sewage). But the Design capacity of Delhi’s Sewage Treatment Plants (STP) is about 520 MGD, actual treatment happening is closer to 380 MGD. (DJB is claiming that it is selling about 100 MGD of treated sewage to bodies like Pragati Power project, NDPL, Jindal, MCD, among others.) This means that by design Delhi does not have capacity to treat the sewage it generates and untreated sewage is by design, destined to be dumped in the Yamuna River, in complete violation of the Water Pollution Control Act of 1974. If Delhi gets more freshwater, it will generate more sewage, worsening the situation of Yamuna River in Delhi and downstream of Delhi. This will be in violation of the law and the declared objective of the Prime Minister-headed National Ganga River Basin Authority. Should not Delhi be expected to put its house in order in terms of installing adequate capacity of operating STPs in Delhi for the current and future sewage that Delhi will generate? Should not all the industries, hotels, office complexes, malls, multiplexes and such units be asked to install functional STPs in their premises and recycle part of treated water in their units in say next two years, punitive measures kicking in if they fail to achieve that at the end of that term? Why should the hundreds of parks in Delhi continue to be irrigated with freshwater? Why should Delhi be demanding more freshwater from outside without achieving all this?

6.                   Issues related to environmental and social costs/destruction due to Renuka Dam Delhi seems to have got used to demanding water from far-off sources. Some of the sources that Delhi has used up in the process in the past include: Bhakra Dam (Sutlej River), Hathnikund barrage and Western Yamuna Canal (Yamuna River), Ramganga Dam (Ramganga River), Tehri Dam (Bhagirathi – Ganga River). The huge displacements and environmental destruction that these projects have created are fresh in people’s minds and the number of sufferers keeps going up, they getting no benefits, only the costs. What right Delhi has to demand more of such displacement and destruction?

Now Delhi is saying that it wants to purchase more water and it claims that Himachal is the next willing seller[3] through the building of Renuka Dam. The trouble is, that the reality is quite complex and this attitude of Delhi rulers as buyers of water from such far off dams without bothering about the consequences thereof would be pretty shocking, if true. Renuka dam with live storage capacity of 498 MCM will displace at least 6000 people from 34 villages, submerge about 1600 ha of land, mostly very fertile land or dense biodiversity rich forest, implying uprooting of several lakh trees, thus destroying a huge carbon sink and implying huge climate change impact (in complete violation of the declared aim of the National Action Plan on Climate Change and National Green Mission), destruction of the river and so on. Briefly, it will create immense destruction which seems completely avoidable. There are many other related issues, including that of lack of legal memorandum of agreement, demand from the upper Yamuna basin states (Haryana, UP, Rajasthan) for share in benefits, the huge economic cost, the serious impact of the project on existing downstream hydropower project and other use of the river, inadequate EIA, public consultation and so on. In short, we do not think there is any case for Delhi to demand and facilitate building of Renuka dam for its use.

Under the circumstances, we do not think there is any justification in Delhi’s demand for this dam. We urge you kindly give this issue serious thought and review Delhi government’s position on the same. Delhi must give a lead to the entire country in managing its water within available limits rather than plan on poaching water from far flung areas, which provides the city dwellers with a false sense of unlimited and plentiful supplies, just because Delhi happens to be the nation’s capital. Let Delhi under your stewardship set a shining example for other cities in the country to follow by withdrawing from the Dam project on river Giri at Renuka ji.

We would be happy to come and meet you and explain to you in detail why we are saying this.

We will await an early and point wise reply on this from you.

Endorsed by:

Dr Vandana Shiva, Research Foundation for Science Technology and Ecology, (vandana.shiva@gmail.com)

Manoj Mishra, Yamuna Jiye Abhiyaan, Delhi (yamunajiye@gmail.com)

Rajendra Singh, Jal Biradari (rajendra@tarunbharatsangh.org)

Vijayan MJ, Delhi Forum, New Delhi (vijayan@delhiforum.net)

Gopal Krishna, WaterWatch Alliance, New Delhi (krishna2777@gmail.com)

Vimal Bhai, Matu Jansangathan, Delhi (bhaivimal@gmail.com)

Guman Singh, Himalay Niti Abhiyan (gumanhna@gmail.com)

Rajni Kant Mudgal, South Asian Dialogues on Ecological Democracy, Delhi (networkscommunication@gmail.com)

Dr Sudhirendar Sharma, The Ecological Foundation, Delhi (sudhirendarsharma@gmail.com)

R.Sreedhar, Environics Trust, Delhi, (environics@gmail.com)

Mamata Dash, National Forum of Forest People and Forest Workers, Delhi (mamata68@gmail.com)

Vikram Soni, UGC Professor Centre for Theoretical Physics, Jami Millia. Natural Heritage first, Delhi, (v.soni@airtelmail.in)

Richa Minocha, Jan Abhiyan Sanstha (richa_csrd2003@yahoo.co.in)

Nagraj Adve, Delhi Platform, Delhi (nagraj.adve@gmail.com)

Subhash Gatade, New Socialist Initiative, Delhi (subhash.gatade@gmail.com)

Himanshu Thakkar, South Asia Network on Dams, Rivers & People, 86-D, AD block, Shalimar Bagh, Delhi 110088 (ht.sandrp@gmail.com) (address for correspondence)

Ramaswamy R Iyer, former Secretary, Union Ministry of Water Resources, Government of India, Delhi (ramaswamy.iyer@gmail.com)

Partitosh Tyagi, former Chairman, Central Pollution Control Board, Delhi (paritoshtyagi@gmail.com)

Sanjay Kak, Filmmaker, New Delhi (kaksanjay@gmail.com)

Amita Baviskar, Institute of Economic Growth, Delhi (amita.baviskar@gmail.com)

Subrat Kumar Sahu, Independent Filmmaker and Journalist, New Delhi (subrat69@gmail.com)

Tarini Manchanda, Film maker, Delhi (mtarini@gmail.com)

Richard Mahapatra, Delhi (richardmahapatra@gmail.com)

Arun Bidani, Delhi (bidani.arun@gmail.com)

Himanshu Upadhyay , Ph D student, JNU, New Delhi 110 067 (himanshugreen@gmail.com)

Shaweta Anand, Delhi (shaweta.hnm@gmail.com)

Pravin Kushwaha, Delhi (pravin.kushwaha@gmail.com)

Rita Kumari, Delhi (ritasaded@gmail.com)

Neeraj Doshi, New Delhi (neerajdoshi@gmail.com)

Swati Jain Doshi, New Delhi (swati.2821@gmail.com)

Sudha Vasan, Delhi University (sudha.vasan@gmail.com)
Sanjay Kumar, St Stephen’s College, Delhi

Varsha Mehta, Delhi (mehtavarsha1@gmail.com)

Afsar Jafri, Delhi (a.jafri@focusweb.org)

Tinni Sawhney, New Delhi (tinni.sawhney@sapplpp.org)

Mr. Arvind Malik, New Delhi (arvindkmalik@gmail.com)

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Tarini is definitely adjusted to delhi weather- im complaining more about the cold here, than i did in maine… and our editing room being super duper cold (although well decorated and home to a heater) is STILL inviting to me, because i am finally in the mood to lock myself in and welcome 2010- edit edit edit – ing away!

I hope your 2010 is revolutionary.

Did you know that early films in the US (in the days when you actually physically cut the reel of film and pieced it together…) were edited mostly by women because editing was considered a menial task…neither did i…!