11 ms·

India set to start massive project to divert Ganges and Brahmaputra rivers

55 points by nafizh 10y ago

arvizard 10y ago
What other alternatives exist for dealing with the issue of water shortage with 200 billion dollars? How about desalination of sea water? Costs seem to be getting lower. What risks does this pose compared to inter linking of rivers?
yread 10y ago
Water disputes are becoming increasingly common it seems, see http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2016/03/egypt-ethiopia-renaissance-dam-water-storage-nile-dispute.html# http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2016/03/egypt-ethi...
- sametmax 10y ago
  This is actually something you can start war on, since people can not live very long without water. The situation of India is critical: most water source are heavily poluted, the population is as big as China's, but China has way more space and invaded Tibet, securing the montains water. Now add the following facts: - India has a class system generating a lot of social tensions, and it's getting worst as a small super rich class is booming. - A lot of different cultures and religions are mixed, sexual restrictions are still in place and they don't get along with some countries at their very border. - They got the nuclear weapon. And you got a cocktail for a Michael Bay movie.
  - prawn 10y ago
    A cocktail without ice.
kinai 10y ago
"Hey lets divert 2 huge natural rivers, I bet there won't be any unforeseen consequences if you really really just put enough thought into it"
- thaumasiotes 10y ago
  Diverting huge rivers is a project people have engaged in everywhere for multiple thousands of years. We do it because it's useful.
  - Aelinsaar 10y ago
    Killing someone for their possessions and meat has been done for thousands of years, and is useful.
kchoudhu 10y ago
RIP Bangladesh.
jessaustin 10y ago
Decades hence, the ensuing disasters will be considered inevitable. Of course there would have been bad science. Of course there would have been shoddy construction. Of course the scale of the project would have been matched only by the scale of corruption. Of course most stakeholders' interests would have been ignored. Of course it would have been more practical for people to move away from the desert than for the desert to be somehow reincarnated as habitable. Looking forward, however, one can almost justify some measure of hope.
- Hondor 10y ago
  What won't be inevitable is whether those disasters are worse than what would have happened otherwise. People are already running out of drinking water! Contemporary western morals put the environment first at all costs, even ahead of human life. That's only a position you can take after your humans already have a good quality of life. Developing countries still need to improve on nature to help their people. Would you instead like to return the Colorado river to its original course where it dumped most of its water into the sea, leaving desert all around it? Never have built all the many canals around the world? Just crammed all people into the few naturally fertile areas and left the rest as a giant eco-tourism park for the wealthy?
  - jessaustin 10y ago
    Like most people who know anything about the Colorado River, I do wish it were not depleted as it is now. I wish that wasteful subsidized alfalfa cultivation in Arizona would cease and therefore that dairy production would return to the Midwest where it sustainably belongs. I wish that the riverbed at the Gulf of California weren't dry every day of most years, and that native wildlife could recover. I wish that the cities of southern California and Arizona would try harder to live in a sustainable way. With respect to TFA, I wish India-first commentators would realize that this project threatens hundreds of millions of Indians and Bangladeshis, a number that dwarfs former populations of the North American southwest.
  - erikpukinskis 10y ago
    No one is saying we don't need to solve the water problem. The suggestion on the table is that there are better solutions than a nationwide diversion project.
minipci1321 10y ago
Can't help but think about: https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn4637-russia-reviving-massive-river-diversion-plan/ https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn4637-russia-reviving-...
- jessaustin 10y ago
  The 'stans seem to have backed the wrong horse in Luzhkov. Probably for the best, since it's difficult to imagine Russia completing a project of that size with recent oil prices.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
ashwinm 10y ago
Inter-linking not diverting, BS western media!. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Rivers_Inter-link https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Rivers_Inter-link
- kchoudhu 10y ago
  There's a set volume of water in these rivers. If you "interlink" the rivers, some of the water that would go to Bangladesh will go elsewhere, depriving downstream consumers of water they were expecting. It's a dick move by India. Calling it something else does nothing to change that.
  - shripadk 10y ago
    The present Indian government settled a long standing border dispute with Bangladesh (since it's liberation from Pakistan in 1974 aided by India) where 111 border enclaves were exchanged for 51 enclaves: http://www.news18.com/news/india/prime-minister-narendra-modi-signs-land-boundary-agreement-with-bangladesh-pm-sheikh-hasina-1002466.html http://www.news18.com/news/india/prime-minister-narendra-mod... India has good relations with Bangladesh despite there being illegal immigration across the borders and I'm sure the governments of both countries will be able to resolve this dispute amicably.
  - ashwinm 10y ago
    Dude, go through the wiki link once. Also we already have a water treaty with Bangladesh.
    - kchoudhu 10y ago
      According to the wiki, Interlink has been deemed to be potentially beneficial to Nepal and Bangladesh assuming proper water management treaties are negotiated with those countries. Please point me to these properly negotiated agreements. And pointing to the existing water sharing agreement with Bangladesh is dishonest. Putting aside the fact that it only lasts for 30 years and makes no mention of Interlink, everyone agrees that the treaty is inadequate, as evidenced by the massive tracts of arable land in northern Bangladesh that have fallen out of cultivation over the last 40 years due excess salinity caused by poor flow out of the Farakka Barrage. So yeah: dick move.
sizzzzlerz 10y ago
The Law of Unforseen Consequences cannot be ignored and a full accounting of its costs will be paid. This will not turn out well.
- Gustomaximus 10y ago
  I'm not so pessimistic. While absolutely there could be problems I think of a similar Australian scheme that has been largely successful. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snowy_Mountains_Scheme https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snowy_Mountains_Scheme
hellyeasa 10y ago
Before any Southern Californians object, remember that almost all your clean water comes from snowmelt diverted through hundreds of miles of aqueducts. Draining lakes such as Owen's Lake to a dusty dry alkali bed. Who are we to condemn India's actions? Let's just hope the project minimizes ecological impact.
- Aelinsaar 10y ago
  Speaking as a non-Southern Californian... at least your neck of the woods has an obvious and inescapable conclusion. You're going to have a tremendous earthquake on the San Andreas, which will barely touch Southern California physically. It will probably level LA and SF though, at the very least. I suspect that faced with the prospect of cleaning that mess, and rebuilding, suddenly we'll all find our copies of 'Cadillac Desert'.
- whyenot 10y ago
  > Who are we to condemn India's actions? Let's just hope the project minimizes ecological impact. I think Californians have every right to condemn this project. Not only have we experienced the benefits of huge water projects like this, but also the costs. The disruption of the delta (take note Bangladesh), Owens Lake that has been turned into stinging alkali sands, a Colorado river that rarely makes it to the sea, Hetch Hetchy, a beautiful valley in Yosemite that a century ago was sacrificed in order for San Francisco to have clean water (not a judgement call, the water in SF is fantastic, but there is a price..) and so on. Now we are gearing up to tunnel around the delta so Southern California can suck even more water out of the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers; there will be an environmental price for that as well. My concern with this project is that Bangladesh will get the short end of the stick. They already are in a difficult spot with the sea level rising, and, if a reduction in water flow also reduces the amount of silt reaching the delta there will be more subsidence and an already difficult problem will be made even worse.
- prawn 10y ago
  Wouldn't Californians therefore be in a position to object and warn others of the consequences?
seanmcdirmid 10y ago
The next wars will be fought over water, not oil. We are already seeing pressure in India, heavily dammed China, SE Asia, not to mention smaller problems between the US and Mexico.
whack 10y ago
Before people start engaging in fear mongering and doomsday prophesying, please spend a little time researching this issue further. This isn't the first time a project of this scale has been done successfully. Germany has already done something similar with the Rhine-Main-Danube canal[1]. 3 similar projects have been conducted in America, involving over 2500km of waterways[2][3][4]. There are indeed some concerns over the environmental impacts that this will have, just like with any major infrastructure project, but no scholar has forecast the kind of doomsday rhetoric that people here seem to be spouting just from reading the headline. If you're going to make the argument that such projects should be reflexively abandoned because of "unintended/unpredictable consequences", any and all GMO agriculture practices should also be abandoned immediately by the same reasoning. And yet, reasonable people have come to agree that blindly standing in the way of progress, especially when it stands to benefit hundreds of millions of people, is just silly. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhine%E2%80%93Main%E2%80%93Danube_Canal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhine%E2%80%93Main%E2%80%93Dan... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illinois_Waterway https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illinois_Waterway [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tennessee%E2%80%93Tombigbee_Waterway https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tennessee%E2%80%93Tombigbee_Wa... [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_Intracoastal_Waterway https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_Intracoastal_Waterway
- kchoudhu 10y ago
  The difference here is that Germany and the US could be counted upon to negotiate in good faith with their riparian neighbors. India... not so much.
  - shripadk 10y ago
    I call BS on this. India has always been a good neighbor. If that wasn't the case we would never have been able to resolve the long standing border dispute that existed between India and Bangladesh: http://www.news18.com/news/india/prime-minister-narendra-modi-signs-land-boundary-agreement-with-bangladesh-pm-sheikh-hasina-1002466.html http://www.news18.com/news/india/prime-minister-narendra-mod... The question that really needs to be asked is: Does India have good neighbors? China and Pakistan illegally occupying lands in Kashmir and Arunachal Pradesh, illegal immigration from Bangladesh into North-eastern Indian states, Sri Lanka capturing and killing Indian fisherman, the list goes on and on. EDIT: There is already a Water Treaty between India and Bangladesh over sharing of Ganges waters at Farakka: http://www.jrcb.gov.bd/attachment/Gganges_Water_Sharing_treaty,1996.pdf http://www.jrcb.gov.bd/attachment/Gganges_Water_Sharing_trea... You still have doubts over India having bad faith in negotiating with it's neighbors? Give me one instance where India has broken a pact with it's neighbors?
enugu 10y ago
Desalination is also being considered, though it is expensive. http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/aurangabad/Govt-mulls-desalination-plant-to-fight-regions-water-crisis/articleshow/51589150.cms http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/aurangabad/Govt-mull... There are some projects running in Chennai, currently.
photonwins 10y ago
I am sure there is a perfect recipe book for solving fresh water problem for millions of people and animals that India is not following.
cheriot 10y ago
Areas immediately around the Ganges are already experiencing drought because so much of the river's water is already used for irrigation. Is North India and Bangladesh as screwed as this makes it sound?
- ramgorur 10y ago
  yes, during the spring/early summer, on the bangladesh side, you can cross the ganges river on foot. in the mid-monsoon, the river floods like crazy and washes away millions of settlements in a snap. this has been going on like 40 years, just because of the farakka barrage, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farakka_Barrage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farakka_Barrage
openfuture 10y ago
Given how confusing the HN discussion is I can only imagine how misinformed the people who this actually affects are.
casouniquo 10y ago
Now china should start diverting Brahmaputra river, or build more dams http://www.hindustantimes.com/world/china-s-largest-dam-in-tibet-on-brahmaputra-river-switched-on/story-NuZapXFhCSkHlCyRbXiRJK.html http://www.hindustantimes.com/world/china-s-largest-dam-in-t...
- ramgorur 10y ago
  they have already started it, now it's time to see how india reacts.
Grue3 10y ago
Reminds me of Soviet plans to divert Siberian rivers to the south (deserts in Kazakhstan etc.). It's quite wasteful that these rivers flow north, where nobody lives, when you think about it.
known 10y ago
Why not Nationalize river waters?

55 points by nafizh 10y ago

What other alternatives exist for dealing with the issue of water shortage with 200 billion dollars? How about desalination of sea water? Costs seem to be getting lower. What risks does this pose compared to inter linking of rivers?

yread 10y ago

Water disputes are becoming increasingly common it seems, see http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2016/03/egypt-ethiopia-renaissance-dam-water-storage-nile-dispute.html# http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2016/03/egypt-ethi...

sametmax 10y ago
This is actually something you can start war on, since people can not live very long without water. The situation of India is critical: most water source are heavily poluted, the population is as big as China's, but China has way more space and invaded Tibet, securing the montains water. Now add the following facts: - India has a class system generating a lot of social tensions, and it's getting worst as a small super rich class is booming. - A lot of different cultures and religions are mixed, sexual restrictions are still in place and they don't get along with some countries at their very border. - They got the nuclear weapon. And you got a cocktail for a Michael Bay movie.
- prawn 10y ago
  A cocktail without ice.

kinai 10y ago

"Hey lets divert 2 huge natural rivers, I bet there won't be any unforeseen consequences if you really really just put enough thought into it"

thaumasiotes 10y ago
Diverting huge rivers is a project people have engaged in everywhere for multiple thousands of years. We do it because it's useful.
- Aelinsaar 10y ago
  Killing someone for their possessions and meat has been done for thousands of years, and is useful.

kchoudhu 10y ago

RIP Bangladesh.

jessaustin 10y ago

Decades hence, the ensuing disasters will be considered inevitable. Of course there would have been bad science. Of course there would have been shoddy construction. Of course the scale of the project would have been matched only by the scale of corruption. Of course most stakeholders' interests would have been ignored. Of course it would have been more practical for people to move away from the desert than for the desert to be somehow reincarnated as habitable. Looking forward, however, one can almost justify some measure of hope.

Hondor 10y ago
What won't be inevitable is whether those disasters are worse than what would have happened otherwise. People are already running out of drinking water! Contemporary western morals put the environment first at all costs, even ahead of human life. That's only a position you can take after your humans already have a good quality of life. Developing countries still need to improve on nature to help their people. Would you instead like to return the Colorado river to its original course where it dumped most of its water into the sea, leaving desert all around it? Never have built all the many canals around the world? Just crammed all people into the few naturally fertile areas and left the rest as a giant eco-tourism park for the wealthy?
- jessaustin 10y ago
  Like most people who know anything about the Colorado River, I do wish it were not depleted as it is now. I wish that wasteful subsidized alfalfa cultivation in Arizona would cease and therefore that dairy production would return to the Midwest where it sustainably belongs. I wish that the riverbed at the Gulf of California weren't dry every day of most years, and that native wildlife could recover. I wish that the cities of southern California and Arizona would try harder to live in a sustainable way. With respect to TFA, I wish India-first commentators would realize that this project threatens hundreds of millions of Indians and Bangladeshis, a number that dwarfs former populations of the North American southwest.
- erikpukinskis 10y ago
  No one is saying we don't need to solve the water problem. The suggestion on the table is that there are better solutions than a nationwide diversion project.

minipci1321 10y ago

Can't help but think about: https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn4637-russia-reviving-massive-river-diversion-plan/ https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn4637-russia-reviving-...

jessaustin 10y ago
The 'stans seem to have backed the wrong horse in Luzhkov. Probably for the best, since it's difficult to imagine Russia completing a project of that size with recent oil prices.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

ashwinm 10y ago

Inter-linking not diverting, BS western media!. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Rivers_Inter-link https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Rivers_Inter-link

kchoudhu 10y ago
There's a set volume of water in these rivers. If you "interlink" the rivers, some of the water that would go to Bangladesh will go elsewhere, depriving downstream consumers of water they were expecting. It's a dick move by India. Calling it something else does nothing to change that.
- shripadk 10y ago
  The present Indian government settled a long standing border dispute with Bangladesh (since it's liberation from Pakistan in 1974 aided by India) where 111 border enclaves were exchanged for 51 enclaves: http://www.news18.com/news/india/prime-minister-narendra-modi-signs-land-boundary-agreement-with-bangladesh-pm-sheikh-hasina-1002466.html http://www.news18.com/news/india/prime-minister-narendra-mod... India has good relations with Bangladesh despite there being illegal immigration across the borders and I'm sure the governments of both countries will be able to resolve this dispute amicably.
- ashwinm 10y ago
  Dude, go through the wiki link once. Also we already have a water treaty with Bangladesh.
  - kchoudhu 10y ago
    According to the wiki, Interlink has been deemed to be potentially beneficial to Nepal and Bangladesh assuming proper water management treaties are negotiated with those countries. Please point me to these properly negotiated agreements. And pointing to the existing water sharing agreement with Bangladesh is dishonest. Putting aside the fact that it only lasts for 30 years and makes no mention of Interlink, everyone agrees that the treaty is inadequate, as evidenced by the massive tracts of arable land in northern Bangladesh that have fallen out of cultivation over the last 40 years due excess salinity caused by poor flow out of the Farakka Barrage. So yeah: dick move.

sizzzzlerz 10y ago

The Law of Unforseen Consequences cannot be ignored and a full accounting of its costs will be paid. This will not turn out well.

Gustomaximus 10y ago
I'm not so pessimistic. While absolutely there could be problems I think of a similar Australian scheme that has been largely successful. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snowy_Mountains_Scheme https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snowy_Mountains_Scheme

hellyeasa 10y ago

Before any Southern Californians object, remember that almost all your clean water comes from snowmelt diverted through hundreds of miles of aqueducts. Draining lakes such as Owen's Lake to a dusty dry alkali bed. Who are we to condemn India's actions? Let's just hope the project minimizes ecological impact.

Aelinsaar 10y ago
Speaking as a non-Southern Californian... at least your neck of the woods has an obvious and inescapable conclusion. You're going to have a tremendous earthquake on the San Andreas, which will barely touch Southern California physically. It will probably level LA and SF though, at the very least. I suspect that faced with the prospect of cleaning that mess, and rebuilding, suddenly we'll all find our copies of 'Cadillac Desert'.
whyenot 10y ago
> Who are we to condemn India's actions? Let's just hope the project minimizes ecological impact. I think Californians have every right to condemn this project. Not only have we experienced the benefits of huge water projects like this, but also the costs. The disruption of the delta (take note Bangladesh), Owens Lake that has been turned into stinging alkali sands, a Colorado river that rarely makes it to the sea, Hetch Hetchy, a beautiful valley in Yosemite that a century ago was sacrificed in order for San Francisco to have clean water (not a judgement call, the water in SF is fantastic, but there is a price..) and so on. Now we are gearing up to tunnel around the delta so Southern California can suck even more water out of the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers; there will be an environmental price for that as well. My concern with this project is that Bangladesh will get the short end of the stick. They already are in a difficult spot with the sea level rising, and, if a reduction in water flow also reduces the amount of silt reaching the delta there will be more subsidence and an already difficult problem will be made even worse.
prawn 10y ago
Wouldn't Californians therefore be in a position to object and warn others of the consequences?

seanmcdirmid 10y ago

The next wars will be fought over water, not oil. We are already seeing pressure in India, heavily dammed China, SE Asia, not to mention smaller problems between the US and Mexico.

whack 10y ago

Before people start engaging in fear mongering and doomsday prophesying, please spend a little time researching this issue further. This isn't the first time a project of this scale has been done successfully. Germany has already done something similar with the Rhine-Main-Danube canal[1]. 3 similar projects have been conducted in America, involving over 2500km of waterways[2][3][4]. There are indeed some concerns over the environmental impacts that this will have, just like with any major infrastructure project, but no scholar has forecast the kind of doomsday rhetoric that people here seem to be spouting just from reading the headline. If you're going to make the argument that such projects should be reflexively abandoned because of "unintended/unpredictable consequences", any and all GMO agriculture practices should also be abandoned immediately by the same reasoning. And yet, reasonable people have come to agree that blindly standing in the way of progress, especially when it stands to benefit hundreds of millions of people, is just silly. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhine%E2%80%93Main%E2%80%93Danube_Canal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhine%E2%80%93Main%E2%80%93Dan... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illinois_Waterway https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illinois_Waterway [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tennessee%E2%80%93Tombigbee_Waterway https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tennessee%E2%80%93Tombigbee_Wa... [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_Intracoastal_Waterway https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_Intracoastal_Waterway

kchoudhu 10y ago
The difference here is that Germany and the US could be counted upon to negotiate in good faith with their riparian neighbors. India... not so much.
- shripadk 10y ago
  I call BS on this. India has always been a good neighbor. If that wasn't the case we would never have been able to resolve the long standing border dispute that existed between India and Bangladesh: http://www.news18.com/news/india/prime-minister-narendra-modi-signs-land-boundary-agreement-with-bangladesh-pm-sheikh-hasina-1002466.html http://www.news18.com/news/india/prime-minister-narendra-mod... The question that really needs to be asked is: Does India have good neighbors? China and Pakistan illegally occupying lands in Kashmir and Arunachal Pradesh, illegal immigration from Bangladesh into North-eastern Indian states, Sri Lanka capturing and killing Indian fisherman, the list goes on and on. EDIT: There is already a Water Treaty between India and Bangladesh over sharing of Ganges waters at Farakka: http://www.jrcb.gov.bd/attachment/Gganges_Water_Sharing_treaty,1996.pdf http://www.jrcb.gov.bd/attachment/Gganges_Water_Sharing_trea... You still have doubts over India having bad faith in negotiating with it's neighbors? Give me one instance where India has broken a pact with it's neighbors?

enugu 10y ago

Desalination is also being considered, though it is expensive. http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/aurangabad/Govt-mulls-desalination-plant-to-fight-regions-water-crisis/articleshow/51589150.cms http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/aurangabad/Govt-mull... There are some projects running in Chennai, currently.

photonwins 10y ago

I am sure there is a perfect recipe book for solving fresh water problem for millions of people and animals that India is not following.

cheriot 10y ago

Areas immediately around the Ganges are already experiencing drought because so much of the river's water is already used for irrigation. Is North India and Bangladesh as screwed as this makes it sound?

ramgorur 10y ago
yes, during the spring/early summer, on the bangladesh side, you can cross the ganges river on foot. in the mid-monsoon, the river floods like crazy and washes away millions of settlements in a snap. this has been going on like 40 years, just because of the farakka barrage, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farakka_Barrage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farakka_Barrage

openfuture 10y ago

Given how confusing the HN discussion is I can only imagine how misinformed the people who this actually affects are.

casouniquo 10y ago

Now china should start diverting Brahmaputra river, or build more dams http://www.hindustantimes.com/world/china-s-largest-dam-in-tibet-on-brahmaputra-river-switched-on/story-NuZapXFhCSkHlCyRbXiRJK.html http://www.hindustantimes.com/world/china-s-largest-dam-in-t...

ramgorur 10y ago
they have already started it, now it's time to see how india reacts.

Grue3 10y ago

Reminds me of Soviet plans to divert Siberian rivers to the south (deserts in Kazakhstan etc.). It's quite wasteful that these rivers flow north, where nobody lives, when you think about it.

known 10y ago

Why not Nationalize river waters?