Maha floods: ‘Timing of dam water release led to disaster’

Even though the state has blamed unprecedented rains for the floods that killed 29 people and displaced 2.85 lakh in Kolhapur, Sangli and Satara districts of western Maharashtra, questions are being raised over its flood management system. Did the state wake up too late to realise the disaster in its backyard ? And does it have any mechanism to alert, manage and reduce the impact of such floods?

Officials as well as independent experts admitted it was not just heavy rainfall in the Krishna river basin, where the districts are situated, that led to the floods. The floods were exacerbated by release of water from overflowing dams in the region at the same time that the downpour hit them. There are 12 major dams in these three districts. A post published by organisation South Asia Network on Dams, Rivers, People (SANDRP), on Thursday, titled, ‘Aug 2019 Krishna Basin Floods in Maharashtra-Karnataka: How Dams Harming rather than Helping’ pointed this out, questioning why dam operators did not start releasing water earlier even though the India Meteorological Department (IMD) had predicted heavy rainfall for this month.

The post by hydrology experts, Parineeta Dandekar and Himanshu Thakkar, stated, “The flood disaster has exactly coincided with the dams getting full [August 5]. But, why are the dams full by August 5? Why did the dams not start releasing water by July 25…if these dams [Koyna, Warna, Radhanagri] had released water from July 25, they would have had sufficient space during first week of August, when the districts received heavy rainfall and that would have helped to reduce the floods rather than increase it as the dams ended up doing.” While the floods would have still occurred, the experts argued its impact vis a vis the damage could have been curbed if the release of water was judiciously managed.

Another water expert and a former professor with the Water and Land Management Institute (Walmi), Pradeep Purandare, said the inherent lacunae within the state’s water resources department, which manages river basins and dams, puts a question mark on the government’s current and future ability to tackle such a situation. “We need flood management for an entire river basin — across states — and not just for every dam. But, we don’t have technical capacity or data to manage floods in river basins. Our department does not even have a hydrologist. There is no flood warning system or advanced equipment to monitor flood situation and alert people,” he said, adding the “myopic focus” of the department is to solely store water in reservoirs and ensure it gets filled first.

A senior water resources engineer said they had no choice but to release the water this week as the reservoirs were full. “Given the drought scenario, the tendency is to first fill the reservoir completely and then release excess water,” the engineer said.

In this case, the Krishna river (26% of the basin falls in Maharashtra) crossed the highest flood level recorded by Central Water Commission in at least four sites in the state and four sites in Karnataka.

The Almatti dam’s swollen backwaters furthered worsened the situation in Sangli and Kolhapur. While chief minister (CM) Devendra Fadnavis had requested the Karnataka CM to release waters from Almatti, the fear of causing floods in northern Karnataka has stopped the neighbouring state to accede to this request fully so far. Fadnavis had been promised that Karnataka would start releasing 5 lakh cusecs of water from Thursday night, but so far the state has started releasing 4.50 lakh cusecs from Friday evening.

First Published: Aug 10, 2019 00:14 IST