Chandan Da: Thanks for your views on this point. For me, it is a very balanced and reasonable view.
These are issues that are not easy to get a good handle on Uttam. I don't necessarily believe ANY govt.'s claims on such matters. They are, at best, half-truths. Having said that, if we look at the Chinese acknowledgement that they are making a "run-of-the-river" hydropower "tunnel", it does NOT mean "diverting" the river away some place else. What it means is that they are diverting the water to run thru a tunnel and back into the river, while generating power during the run thru the tunnel. But even here can be half-truths and misleading claims, like there are in the Lower Subansiri HEP project, which India claims to be a "run-of-the-river" HEP project and thus claiming there will be no reduction of water-flow. But what India does not tell you, unless challenged, is that: The Subansiri water will be impounded daily for about 20 hours, to build up the height of the water column in the reservoir, so that they can generate maximum power by releasing it for the remaining four hours in the evening. Now, the claim that it does not affect the total flow of water may be technically true. But the fact that every evening the Subansiri will flood and most of the day will run dry, will have a huge impact on the lives of the people downstream and a wholesale destruction of the habitat of all living things that have adapted to living in and with the river over millenia. And if you look into the impact of sudden release of massive amounts of water to prevent a dam collapse after a sudden spurt in rainfall or a cloudburst, like has been done by power generators in every dam in the NE in recent decades, it could mean a calamity of unprecedented proportions, not just for those in the Subansiri valley, but much farther downstream on the Brahmaputra valley even. Now looking back on the Tsangpo damming in Tibet, surely it will impact flow downstream during the dry season, but not like it would be if it were to be diverted AWAY from the river ( for irrigation or driniking water etc.) and not in the total flow of the Brahmaputra river. Because the Brahmaputra flow is a result of not just Tsangpo alone, it also has Lohit and Dibang ( in the dry season) that contribute snowmelt waters, even though to a lesser extent than the Tsangpo. If the snowmelt water continues to reduce as is predicted, the Tibetan hydropower project could become dysfunctional. So the Chinese could impound the water in a reservoir to use it as it sees fit. THAT would be when it will seriously impact the Brahmaputra in the dry season. But during the wet season, the Brahmaputra gets its flow from rainfall south of the Himalayas and thus would not feel the impact of a small Chinese impoundment in Tibet. But that too could change if China begins to build a series of dams on the Tsangpo all the way down to near the border at Arunachal. That could have very serious impact on the Brahmaputra. That is just ONE aspect of the issues. THere are many more. Uttam Kumar Borthakur _______________________________________________ assam mailing list assam@assamnet.org http://assamnet.org/mailman/listinfo/assam_assamnet.org
