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Sikkim teetering on flood of GLOF concerns as Teesta Dam rebuild plan rolls on
Sikkim's Teesta III dam rebuilding project gets the nod of the Environment Ministry's Expert Appraisal Committee (EAC), but a flood of concerns that led to the devastation of the previous dam in a glacial lake outburst flood loom over the project.
At midnight on October 3, 2023, a glacial lake outburst flood (GLOF) swallowed more than 100 lives, damaged 1,800 houses, and battered the 1,200 MW Teesta III hydel dam–Sikkim’s biggest– built at a cost of ₹13,965-crore, to a defunct mode. That is apart from a deluge of untold human suffering inflicted on inhabitants of the northeastern state of Sikkim.
Now, Sikkim seeks to rebuild Teesta Dam, first commissioned in 2017, at an estimated cost of ₹4,189 crore, to treble its previous capacity. The Union Environmental Ministry’s Expert Appraisal Committee (EAC) has reportedly given the go-ahead to the project, which environmental activists fear would be detrimental to vast swathes of the fragile ecosystem of the Himalayan state.
The political opposition’s voice cannot reach the Sikkim Assembly on an issue that may have far-reaching consequences. There is no opposition in the State Assembly—all 32 members of the legislative assembly (MLAs) are from the Sikkim Kranti Morcha—to raise the banner of revolt.
The BJP's state unit and some opposition parties have publicly voiced dissent, but the ruling Sikkim Kranti Morcha looks elsewhere.
The BJP–which heads the central dispensation that controls the union environment ministry but doesn’t have political clout in the state–has opposed the reconstruction plan invoking the GLOF disaster, which impacted about 90,000 of the state’s 6.32 lakh people–nearly one in seven inhabitants of Sikkim.
Vulnerable water bodies
There are 320 lakes in Sikkim and 16 of them have been identified as vulnerable, The Telegraph reported citing a State Government report. The National Disaster Management Authority and the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation are conducting tests for the state government on these lakes, per The Telegraph report.
A key concern raised in the report, quoting an undentified Sikkim government official, is the distance between the lakes and nearest habitats, which is just three kilometres, underscoring the magnitude a probable natural disaster can trigger.
The new proposal is to increase the dam capacity to manage 19,946 cubic meters a second (cumecs), nearly thrice the previous dam’s 7,000 cumecs in peak time.
Probably foreseeing a GLOF-like scenario, the proposed dam is to be a concrete structure, unlike the devastated Teesta, which was part-rock and part-concrete.
The developers of the dam, the Sikkim Urja Limited has reportedly proposed to build a new 118.66-m-tall concrete gravity dam in place of 60-m-tall rockfill concrete faced dam, washed away by the flash flood water from the South Lhonak Glacial lake.
Also Read | Damned by our dams as safety issues swirl
Flood of concerns
Local concerns stem from the fact that relief and rehabilitation measures following the GLOF devastation of the Chungthang Dam, part of the Teesta III, were abysmal. “There are no official records about the rehabilitation package and its disbursal, as is the norm in Sikkim,” Mohan Kumar Karki, a Gangtok-based journalist who was among the first to reach the site of the devastated Chungtham dam in 2023, two days after the GLOF wreaked havoc, told Mint.
He has a point– echoed by all and sundry in India’s self-proclaimed Green State–Information flow is scant, data is buried in bureaucratic rigmarole, and available numbers are confusing.
“How can a dam built for ₹13,965 in 2017 be rebuilt for ₹4,000-odd crore,” asks Professor Rajesh Raj SN, Associate Professor, Economics Department, Sikkim University.
Backers of the rebuilding project claimed in their report to the EAC that the underground powerhouse and equipment could be restored to original condition in 10-12 months, The Hindu reported.
But Karki and his ilk rubbish the case for rebuilding the dam, which, they say, has been proposed at double the previous dam’s height. Reaching Chungthang itself is a herculean task. Even the approach roads devastated by GLOF are yet to be relaid more than a year after the disaster, they point out.
What is the hurry now to rebuild the dam without even a public hearing, Karki asks. The last public hearing that anyone had heard about happened in Chungthang itself in 2006, when the Teesta 3 was proposed.
Protests mounted by the Lepchas forced authorities to abandon a dam project in Dzongu, he said. The Lepchas are scheduled tribes, and they cited regulations barring outsiders from living or buying land there and their local customs to make a case for scrapping the project.
Power scenario
Sikkim produced more than 2,300 MW before GLOF, according to conservative estimates. After GLOF devastated the mountainous state spread over 7,000 square kilometres, uprooting the Chungthang and Dikchu projects, Sikkim’s power generation capacity was scaled down by nearly 1,700 MW, a substantial chunk considering its 2,300 MW-odd capacity before GLOF. Perhaps the proponents of the dam, which includes the present state administration, want to tap this as a source of revenue for the state.
Voices of concern
The dam’s opponents say the design was arrived at without completion of critical studies mandated by the Central Water Commission (CWC), including a revised Probable Maximum Flood (PMF) assessment.
“We have opposed the process. The expert committee of the environment ministry wasn’t satisfied with the project. There was no public hearing. What was the hurry in issuing the clearance? We have sought a clarification from the ministry,” Niren Bhandari, spokesperson of the Sikkim unit of the BJP, told Mint over phone.
Bhandari said once the organisational election process in the BJP is over, the matter will be taken up with the party’s national leadership.
SDF wakes up
The Sikkim Democratic Front (SDF), the party which ruled the state for 25 years from 1994, was the last to voice its protest, after the BJP and the Citizen Action Party-Sikkim. SDF spokesperson, Rikzing Norbu Dorjee Bhutia, expressed discontent over the lack of public hearing on the project.
He demanded a white paper on the utilisation of funds received by the state government after GLOF in 2023, and alleged that the government had failed to rehabilitate and compensate the victims. The BJP spokesperson too has voiced dissatisfaction on the GLOF compensation issue.
But the SDF spokesperson poked the Sikkim BJP unit. “Permission to reconstruct a new dam was approved by the ministry under BJP-led central government but the same decision was being ‘strongly opposed’ by the BJP in Sikkim. "I request BJP Sikkim not create confusion among our people and to take a clear stand on the matter," Bhutia said.
The SDF also reminded the ruling SKM of its “opposition prior to 2019 on construction of dams in Sikkim.”
SKM's stoic silence
The SKM, on its part, has chosen to remain mum. Calls and queries to Sikkim Chief Minister Prem Singh Tamang by Mint remained unanswered, an eerie indicator of the lackadaisical manner in which the Himalayan state deals with serious issues that may adversely affect its fragile ecosystem.
The Chief Minister himself holds the power portfolio in the state, underscoring the importance the SKM attaches to boost, or restore, Sikkim’s revenue generation capacity, despite environmental concerns.
As the controversy rages, the Teesta River flows on, pregnant with a deluge of potential disasters that could be triggered by human recklessness.
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Business NewsNewsSikkim teetering on flood of GLOF concerns as Teesta Dam rebuild plan rolls on
First Published:31 Jan 2025, 12:57 PM IST
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