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> The disaster draws attention to the controversial hydropower projects Why is this the subheading of the article? All the speculation regarding the actual fl

> The disaster draws attention to the controversial hydropower projects Why is this the subheading of the article? All the speculation regarding the actual flood is a glacier breaking away and falling 2km on valley floor triggering landslides and sudden water release. So, why choose to focus on something which many initially incorrectly identified as the reason for destruction. I am not saying we should not focus on this and the highway construction happening there, as there actually are some valid concerns about them; but seems like a poor thing conflating these two. Also, most of these new dams in the upper reaches are not the massive water holding barrages that cause ecological destruction. Most of them hold little or no water. They are constructed on the route of a river to funnel water through a tunnel to the turbines that is used to generate power.

idlewords 6y ago
Further in the article it explains that communities often form around the remote dams, bringing people closer to the rivers, and increasing the body count when something like this happens.
- actuator 6y ago
  But that has nothing to do with the dam itself. That should be regulated by the state authorities. Living close to rivers in such fragile places is not a good idea. Back in 2013, roughly the same place witnessed ~6000 deaths in floods. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013_North_India_floods https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013_North_India_floods
  - danans 6y ago
    Based solely on my observations traveling in the area, the topography is so extreme (very steep cliffs not far from the river banks) that there is little option but to live near the river. I'm sure there are more and less safe places on the river bank, but there aren't many places a safe distance from the river that aren't also thousands of feet up in elevation.
  - pashsdk27 6y ago
    The biggest reason why most people prefer to live near the rivers in this region is water. A lot of the villages up in the mountains do not have running water and you have to hike a few kilometers down the valley to get water from hand-pumps and small streams. That was the case when I last visited my grandparent's village in Uttarakhand. Even my hometown which is one of the largest towns in the region has water problems. It gets worse the higher you go in the Himalayas. Landslides are also a major factor as the mountains are extremely fragile. I've witnessed several such small landslides during my trips that often block the small mountain roads. They are very common. There is pretty much no usable agricultural land and most villages rely on money from people working outside the region or small scale cattle domestication. Upper Himalayas is a rough terrain and so not many people live there. Living closer to the rivers is much better. Even better is living closer to the major roads that often are closer to the rivers. Things are slowly and steadily improving these days. The regulations are also being more strictly enforced. Though I'm quite concerned that many similar disasters will happen in the future due to climate change. :/
- temp-dude-87844 6y ago
  The article makes the assertion that communities often form around remote dams, and perhaps this is true for dams in the desert or dams on the plains, but maps and photos of this region reveal that the rivers here are deeply incised among steep mountains, there's essentially no arable land, and villages have been clinging to cliffs just above the rivers for as long as humans have settled here. There's simply nowhere else for them to live, and they've lived there long before any dams. The people who died in this disaster died because a surge of water and mud and debris rushed down the river valley from high up in the mountains. You can't arrest a debris flow [1], you either have to hope it doesn't happen, or engineer at great cost that it doesn't happen, or you pre-emptively relocate to a place where you won't be caught in it. These are hard choices, but the nature of the problem is simple, and traces back to topography.. [1] You can arrest a debris flow with a very large embankment of your own, preferably if there's no lake behind it; water is not compressible, so a debris flow into a reservoir will always risk overtopping the dam with a frighteningly large wave. But, putting dry dams in a narrow river valley is much more complex than dams behind which water can collect.
  - Retric 6y ago
    [1] is correct but the process drastically reduces the energy and peak flow rates. Assuming the dam survives it makes a large difference for people down stream. Visually it’s hard to notice but even just 1 foot matters in a flood.
silexia 6y ago
Big oil has been funding anti - nuclear and anti - hydro efforts for years. The truth is that far more people die from pollution from fossil fuels than have ever died from nuclear or hydro.
- zdragnar 6y ago
  That is rather self fulfilling, though. We produce and use significantly more fossil fuels than we have nuclear or hydro power. If the whole world was run by hydro and nuclear, and fossil fuels were relegated to somewhere between non-existent or hyper-regulated, it wouldn't be a stretch to imagine the reverse as well.
  - erentz 6y ago
    It’s compared on a deaths per unit of energy produced basis. Kind of like how we compare stats per capita between countries of different sizes.
  - ashutoshgngwr 6y ago
    https://youtu.be/Jzfpyo-q-RM https://youtu.be/Jzfpyo-q-RM Edit: Further reading if you prefer it to videos. https://sites.google.com/view/sources-nuclear-death-toll/ https://sites.google.com/view/sources-nuclear-death-toll/
  - WrtCdEvrydy 6y ago
    I believe those figures are per-capita as well.
- mandeepj 6y ago
  > Big oil has been funding anti - nuclear and anti - hydro efforts for years. You gotta stay updated with the latest current affairs. Big oil is no longer big. They have moved to electric and tourist

idlewords 6y ago

Further in the article it explains that communities often form around the remote dams, bringing people closer to the rivers, and increasing the body count when something like this happens.

actuator 6y ago
But that has nothing to do with the dam itself. That should be regulated by the state authorities. Living close to rivers in such fragile places is not a good idea. Back in 2013, roughly the same place witnessed ~6000 deaths in floods. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013_North_India_floods https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013_North_India_floods
- danans 6y ago
  Based solely on my observations traveling in the area, the topography is so extreme (very steep cliffs not far from the river banks) that there is little option but to live near the river. I'm sure there are more and less safe places on the river bank, but there aren't many places a safe distance from the river that aren't also thousands of feet up in elevation.
- pashsdk27 6y ago
  The biggest reason why most people prefer to live near the rivers in this region is water. A lot of the villages up in the mountains do not have running water and you have to hike a few kilometers down the valley to get water from hand-pumps and small streams. That was the case when I last visited my grandparent's village in Uttarakhand. Even my hometown which is one of the largest towns in the region has water problems. It gets worse the higher you go in the Himalayas. Landslides are also a major factor as the mountains are extremely fragile. I've witnessed several such small landslides during my trips that often block the small mountain roads. They are very common. There is pretty much no usable agricultural land and most villages rely on money from people working outside the region or small scale cattle domestication. Upper Himalayas is a rough terrain and so not many people live there. Living closer to the rivers is much better. Even better is living closer to the major roads that often are closer to the rivers. Things are slowly and steadily improving these days. The regulations are also being more strictly enforced. Though I'm quite concerned that many similar disasters will happen in the future due to climate change. :/
temp-dude-87844 6y ago
The article makes the assertion that communities often form around remote dams, and perhaps this is true for dams in the desert or dams on the plains, but maps and photos of this region reveal that the rivers here are deeply incised among steep mountains, there's essentially no arable land, and villages have been clinging to cliffs just above the rivers for as long as humans have settled here. There's simply nowhere else for them to live, and they've lived there long before any dams. The people who died in this disaster died because a surge of water and mud and debris rushed down the river valley from high up in the mountains. You can't arrest a debris flow [1], you either have to hope it doesn't happen, or engineer at great cost that it doesn't happen, or you pre-emptively relocate to a place where you won't be caught in it. These are hard choices, but the nature of the problem is simple, and traces back to topography.. [1] You can arrest a debris flow with a very large embankment of your own, preferably if there's no lake behind it; water is not compressible, so a debris flow into a reservoir will always risk overtopping the dam with a frighteningly large wave. But, putting dry dams in a narrow river valley is much more complex than dams behind which water can collect.
- Retric 6y ago
  [1] is correct but the process drastically reduces the energy and peak flow rates. Assuming the dam survives it makes a large difference for people down stream. Visually it’s hard to notice but even just 1 foot matters in a flood.

silexia 6y ago

Big oil has been funding anti - nuclear and anti - hydro efforts for years. The truth is that far more people die from pollution from fossil fuels than have ever died from nuclear or hydro.

zdragnar 6y ago
That is rather self fulfilling, though. We produce and use significantly more fossil fuels than we have nuclear or hydro power. If the whole world was run by hydro and nuclear, and fossil fuels were relegated to somewhere between non-existent or hyper-regulated, it wouldn't be a stretch to imagine the reverse as well.
- erentz 6y ago
  It’s compared on a deaths per unit of energy produced basis. Kind of like how we compare stats per capita between countries of different sizes.
- ashutoshgngwr 6y ago
  https://youtu.be/Jzfpyo-q-RM https://youtu.be/Jzfpyo-q-RM Edit: Further reading if you prefer it to videos. https://sites.google.com/view/sources-nuclear-death-toll/ https://sites.google.com/view/sources-nuclear-death-toll/
- WrtCdEvrydy 6y ago
  I believe those figures are per-capita as well.
mandeepj 6y ago
> Big oil has been funding anti - nuclear and anti - hydro efforts for years. You gotta stay updated with the latest current affairs. Big oil is no longer big. They have moved to electric and tourist