The ‘man-made’ flood devastation that has caused the Lower Damodar Basin to suffer every year over the years, possibly has an answer planned 30 years ago in the river about 216 kms upstream from the Durgapur Barrage, and hydrology experts from Guwahati have now been assigned to dust off the solution originally suggested by the river management planners. Over the last 30 years, however, the problem of land acquisition has only worsened in Dumka district of the neighbouring Jharkhand, causing a bottleneck for the proposed solution of building a new dam on the Barakar river – a key tributary of the Damodar river.

At Balpahari in Dumka, the Damodar Valley Corporation – the statutory body operating dams and reservoirs upstream of the barrage ~ apprehending worsening flood situations in the downstream had geared up to build a new dam at Balpahari aiming to check the unrelenting inflow from the Maithon dam. “The Jharkhand government has not been able to navigate the land acquisition issue as the indigenous community has been very reluctat to vacate,” said a senior DVC official. The DVC in 1953 had acquired 41,000 acres of land in districts like Dhanbad, Jamtara of Jharkhand and Purulia and West Burdwan districts of West Bengal and the first dam was constructed at Tilaiya. Currently, DVC operates four dams ~ at Tilaiya, Maithon, Panchet and Konar in the upstream.

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The DVC had originally proposed for three more large reservoirs at Balpahari, Bokaro and Tenughat. The Jharkhand government, in 1978 constructed the Tenughat dam but due to inability to acquire the needed land, its flood cushion could not take shape till now. The dam is designed to accommodate a 20 feet high flood cushion (from 862 ft – 882 ft). “But for this, a huge area of upstream land was required, which has still not been made available and encroachment in the basin added to the problem, too,” a DVC official said. Panchet and Maithon dams accommodate 20 feet and 15 feet flood cushions currently but large quantities of sand deposition due to extensive industrialisation and urbanisation have reduced the life span of the dams.

During the initial project planning, the life of the dams was planned to be 75 years, incidentally. “The optimum required land for Maithon and Panchet could not be made available too, resulting in reduction of flood cushions by 5 feet and 10 feet there respectively,” a DVC Water Management System review report stated in 2020. The combined peak and outflow record of DVC dams since October, 1959 till September, 1995 clearly showed the need of dams. In the devastating 1978 flood, though the combined inflow of the dams reached its peak at 7.74 lakh cusecs, the combined outflow was restricted to 1.63 lakh cusecs. “Had the flow been allowed to pass freely without any moderation by DVA dams, it would have generated 11.80 lakh cusecs of inflow at Durgapur Barrage,” a DVC review report claimed. The failure to acquire land at Tenughat meanwhile, has nearly put paid to the proposed Balpahari dam.

“The Central Water Commission’s Guwahati wing has been assigned to prepare a fresh DPR (detailed pro ject report) in six months describing the project outlay, socio environmental impact alongside the simulation water reserve capacity,” said Anjani Kumar Dubey, DVC’s Executive Director (Civil) and project head at Maithon. Last February, at a high level meeting, the CWC, Guwahati was assigned the task. “They have given six months time frame to prepare the report and we can expect by September it’ll be tabled.” The Bengal government meanwhile has warned the DVC that the proposed Balpahari dam should not cause any blockade to the state’s irrigation water. Jharkhand has maintained that the DVC should first set up a barrage there to reduce the land acquisition requirement, but this has not been considered.

Shashi Rakesh, Member Secretary, Damodar Valley River Regulation Committee of the CWC said: “The Guwahati experts are sincerely examining feasibility and prospective yield of the project now.” As explained by Satyabrata Banerjee, DVC’s former Chief Engineer in his water management review report prepared in 2020: “In the original plan it’s envisaged that the Damodar Valley catchment has ability to generate maximum peak flood of 28317 Cubic Metres (10 Lakh Cusecs).

To moderate this flood peak to a safe (level) channel capacity for Lower Damodar area was considered at 7079 Cumecs (2.5 Lakh Cusecs) and for that a total flood storage of 3596 Million Cubic Metres in 7 storage dams was required to be developed.” Mr Banerjee commented: “In fact, only 36 per cent of flood storage in respect to original plan was made available to DVC system for moderation of flood flow, which was grossly inadequate considering the generation capacity of the Damodar catchment areas.” Now, with the changing climate patterns, experts apprehend further devastating flood in the future years and at least one more dam in the upstream has now become highly essential.