Friends of the Earth India demands that the Govt of India ministry of Jal Shakti and the Gujarat Government, which owns and operates the Sardar Sarovar Narmada Nigam Ltd — takes urgent measures and immediately open more gates of the Sardar Sarovar Dam in an orderly way, to save thousands of families from being drowned and their houses and property destroyed. The Narmada Control Authority must immediately bring down dangerously high water levels in the reservoir to save human and non human lives and property of villagers upstream of the Sardar Sarovar Dam.
The situation upstream of the Sardar Sarovar dam in the Narmada valley is now very serious and turning catastrophic by the hour. Due to heavy rains in the upstream areas of the Narmada river, which were known and predicted, the upstream dams like Indira Sagar and Onkareswar are releasing large volumes of water by opening many gates. Despite this, the downstream Sardar Sarovar dam has only opened a few gates and large amounts of water are accumulating in the reservoir upstream of the SSD, due to this large imbalance of inflowing and outflowing water volumes. As reported on the night of Sept 14, over 438,800 cusecs of water was flowing in to the reservoir, while the few gates opened were discharging only around 348,600 cusecs, thus causing water levels to quickly rise past 136.6 meters.
Thousands of families now facing submergence, were falsely declared ‘not-affected’, by manipulating the Back Water Level BWL markings lower than actual, and many such houses are under water now in the Narmada valley. Water levels have risen above 136.80 meters spelling disaster for hundreds of villages in the valley. This submergence of houses, temples, schools, farms etc. is happening despite these being declared above the maximum Back Water Level (BWL), marked much lower than actual water levels. This is in complete violation of the orders of the Supreme Court and the Narmada Tribunal, that persons can only be involuntarily displaced six months after their proper compensation and rehabilitation.
Nearly 15,946 families are excluded from rehabilitation and resettlement due to faulty revision of back water levels and are yet to be compensated and rehabilitated, most falsely marked “non-affected”, but are facing a tragic submergence today. This is a repeat of last year 2023, when the Prime Minister of the country “celebrated his birthday” on Sept.17 by getting the SSD reservoir full to nearly 139 meters, resulting in massive destruction of large number of villages. Those villages still carry the ghostly scars of that destruction. We must point out here that the claims of SSD and similar other hydroelectric power dams being indispensable for irrigation and “green power ” generation, are not correct and are completely unsustainable. Such massive reservoirs in warm climates have shown to emit large amounts of methane by anoxic reaction of huge amounts of biomass trapped in the water and silt. Methane is a Green House Gas about 87 times as powerful as Carbon Dioxide in the first 20 years. Combined with its massive displacement and destruction in the river valleys, big dam based hydropower is not a Green option at all, with much better and lower cost alternatives existing in the form of distributed and community centric Solar and Wind energy etc.
It has also been repeatedly shown that the initial grand claims by these mega dam projects, of irrigating large areas of farmlands never materialized. There are much better and non destructive irrigation alternatives in terms of local water harvesting structures, ground water recharge systems, vegetation based water harvesting and others. Also, the series of dams have effectively killed the life-support capacities of the rivers by drastically reducing the dissolved minerals and oxygen in the waters. Large number of fish deaths reported in the Narmada river last year upstream of SSD, is another proof of that destructive function of big dams. A recent water testing report also pointed out that the stagnant water in the reservoir is completely unfit for direct human use, and was smelling foul too. We note with increasing alarm the threat to – not only homes and properties of thousands of families, but also of the lives of many protesters. Several affected people along with the leader of the iconic struggle Narmada Bachao Andolan Medha Patkar,, have just concluded after basic assurances, a “Jal Satyagraha” on the 14th-15th of September, by standing in the rising waters that has inundated their once dry habitation. They have risked their lives, and their health is already showing impacts of standing in waist deep waters for over 36 hours. Dialogue needs to take place with affected peoples representatives.
We demand that the government authorities take immediate action on the matter and immediately open more gates of the SSD to bring water levels below 135 meters at the least. They must also pay compensation for losses of 2023 and ensure full rehabilitation, as per law.
In Solidarity,
C. Nicholas, Prafulla Samantara, Krishnakant Chauhan
For more details: [email protected]
