Gurdaspur/Pathankot: The signs were there. A weather bulletin predicted above-normal rainfall, a panel of experts recommended in April that excess water be released from Bhakra dam to lower reservoir levels, and encroachment on catchment areas of rivers was no secret.
But authorities did little to brace for what came to be known as the worst floods Punjab witnessed since 1988. More than 1,900 villages were inundated, at least 45 people killed and nearly 4 lakh residents affected in Gurdaspur, Pathankot and Amritsar districts alone.
Experts ThePrint spoke to blamed dam mismanagement, defunct canals, crumbling embankments and unchecked construction for the devastation, with regulation of dam water taking the spotlight. Excess water released from dams over the Ravi, Sutlej and Beas rivers, it is believed, added to the devastation downstream, especially in Punjab.
What made the situation worse were damaged embankments and poor upkeep of 19th-century Madhopur barrage in Pathankot, whose three gates collapsed late last month. This barrage regulates the flow of the Ravi.
But the focus is on three major dams upstream on the state’s three perennial rivers from which water had to be released in the wake of huge inflows.
Bhakra dam on Sutlej river and Pong dam on the Beas are operated by Bhakra Beas Management Board (BBMB), a statutory body constituted under the Punjab Reorganisation Act, 1966. The BBMB also regulates distribution of water between Punjab, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Delhi and Rajasthan. Ranjit Sagar Dam on Ravi river, meanwhile, is operated by Punjab State Power Corporation and the state irrigation department.
According to water sector experts ThePrint spoke to, monsoon water usually fills the dams between June and September every year.
“The storage available during monsoon acts as a flood cushion in dams. But dams have their capacity to store water. This year, excess water came to dams in the upstream of Punjab,” S.K. Halder, former chairman of Central Water Commission (CWC), told ThePrint.
He explained that if a dam can’t store water, it has to be released. This year, due to heavy rainfall, river catchment areas were also swollen and release of water from the dams further flooded the areas downstream.
A former BBMB chairman concurred that “floods were unavoidable due to incessant rains but the damage could have been mitigated had Punjab heeded early warnings of excess rain in April by BBMB and IMD,” and managed dam flow better in the wake of heavy rain.
The India Meteorological Department (IMD) had forecast above-normal monsoon this year for parts of central and northern India. Hill areas of Himachal Pradesh and J&K recorded more than 45 percent excess rainfall (above the seasonal normal) as of 5 September.
ThePrint reached Sanjeev Kumar, director (water regulation) at BBMB, about the discharge of water from dams during August and September, but he refused to comment.
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‘First time since 1988’
Dams upstream of Punjab are maintained and regulated by BBMB and the decision to release water from these dams is taken by a technical committee of board members, chief engineers of partner states and the CWC.
This year, while authorities at the Ranjit Sagar dam, located on the Ravi, upstream of Madhopur barrage, had to release 2.2 lakh cusecs of water in the wake of heavy rain that led to collapse of three barrage gates, the Bhakra and Pong dams too saw record-breaking water inflows and had to release water.
“Water never came into the Ravi at this amount after the 1988 floods. This was beyond capacity. The cloudburst in Kathua and heavy rainfall made the situation worse downstream,” Jaspinder Singh, SDM of Gurudaspur’s Dinanagar, told ThePrint.
As for Bhakra dam, the BBMB technical committee in April approved release of 8,500 cusecs of water from the dam to Haryana but the Punjab government objected, insisting that the release be restricted to 4,000 cusecs. This led to a tussle between the two states and the additional water was not released.
Leader of the Opposition in Punjab Assembly Partap Singh Bajwa said that instead of taking flood-control measures, the state government staged ‘political drama’ and even deployed police at the Bhakra dam gates to block release of additional water.
Weeks later, water had to be released from the dam because of unprecedented rains. By 1 August, Bhakra dam was 50 percent full and outflow was on an average 23,000 cusecs in the 1-18 August period. This increased significantly after that and the dam’s spillway gates were opened for the first time in two years, according to BBMB officials.
“We got inputs from IMD about heavy rainfall this season. On that basis, we had recommended the release of (additional) water (from Bhakra dam). Punjab objected to releasing water. If water had been released at that time, some space would have been created in the dam,” a senior BBMB official told ThePrint, adding that the decision not to release water at the right time could have added to the exent of the devastation.
Unprecedented inflow
BBMB chairman Manoj Tripathi said at a press conference in Chandigarh that this year’s inflow on the Pong dam was about 20 percent higher than 2023, calling it unprecedented. “BBMB maintained a controlled release of not more than one lakh cusecs despite this flow,” he said, adding that never before had Beas carried such volumes of water. “We avoided sudden discharges of 2-2.5 lakh cusecs. The releases have been gradual, controlled, and done with the consent of all partner states, strictly following the rule curve,” he said.
Giving the numbers, Tripathi said the Beas received 11.70 billion cubic metres (bcm) inflow of water from 1 July to 5 September, the highest ever recorded. This number was 9.52 bcm in 2023 and 5 bcm in 2019.
At Bhakra dam, the reservoir recorded an inflow of 9.11 bcm. It was 8.59 bcm in 2019. The dam had recorded the highest inflow of 9.52 bcm during the 1988 floods. Water level at Bhakra dam, Tripathi said, had not crossed the maximum permissible mark of 1,680 feet. “In 1988, the level had gone above 1,685 feet, but this year it is around 1,679 feet.”
He also said states will have to revisit the notion that dams should always be full. “Due to excess water during monsoon, a large amount of water has to be released from the dams, due to which the situation goes out of control,” he added.
Experts ThePrint spoke to said Pong dam can help moderate floods to some extent in the downstream. They also called for better management of dams overall, nothing that there is no proper storage infrastructure for water downstream and embankments are weak.
Crumbling embankments
Another factor worth looking at is crumbling embankment infrastructure in Punjab, with Sutlej and Ravi rivers breaching their banks and causing widespread flooding. In this year’s floods, several embankments on the rivers were reported to have collapsed.
“Floods in the state are also aggravated by the lack of timely maintenance of drains, seasonal streams, rivulets and embankments meant to carry excess rainwater … when dam floodgates are suddenly opened, a massive volume of water rushes into drains, canals, or distributaries. Weak embankments often collapse under pressure leading to flooding,” Gurinder Kaur, former professor in the department of geography, Punjabi University, wrote in Down To Earth.
According to a 2020 report by Punjab government’s mines and geology department, failure to desilt rivers, streams, and drains on time had led to excessive accumulation of silt, sand, and gravel, which was a significant contributing factor behind the 2019 floods in the state.
“Proper desilting has not been carried out in the rivers. This also contributes to the flood,” Baljinder Singh Bhullar, chief agriculture officer of Amritsar, told ThePrint, adding that catchment areas of rivers in the state are heavily encroached.
A second senior BBMB official also said that desilting of dams through water release is a good way to mitigate silt accumulation. Tripathi too flagged the silt issue, pointing out that in Bhakra dam alone, 25 percent of capacity is occupied by silt.
(Edited by Nida Fatima Siddiqui)