The Tehri dam is a reality, but the promises made to the displaced locals have not been kept.
Construction of the controversial dam at Tehri in Uttaranchal is now complete, and over the summer the hydropower plant began producing electricity. Following the shutting of the dam's Tunnel 2 in October 2005, the town of Tehri and other nearby villages are now completely submerged, and more than 100,000 people have been adversely affected, most of them uprooted and moved elsewhere. But despite being at the centre of three decades of legal wrangling, at the time of completion many of the USD 1.2 billion project's most crucial questions passed unanswered.
The Tehri Dam Project aims to supply an enormous amount of crucially needed resources to increasingly parched and energy-starved areas of North India. Officials with the Tehri Hydro Development Corporation claim it will generate 2400 megawatts of electricity, supply 100 cubic feet of water per second to Delhi, and irrigate 270,000 hectares of land in downstream Uttar Pradesh. At the same time, apart from the old town of Tehri, the dam is directly affecting about 125 villages, completely submerging 33 of them. Nearly 5200 hectares of land are being inundated, and almost 5300 urban and 9250 rural families displaced.
Worries about the Tehri dam also exist on a much broader scale. The dam is constructed at the confluence of the Bhagirathi and Bhilangana rivers in Garhwal, and the 855-foot-high edifice – the fifth tallest dam in the world – is intended to hold back a reservoir that extends 45 km into the Bhagirathi Valley and 25 km into the Bhilangana Valley. Unfortunately, in what many national and international experts have said resembles an act of wilful ignorance, this 43 sq km lake lies directly atop an active seismic area known as the 'central Himalayan gap' – just 45 km from the epicentre of the 6.8-strength 1991 Uttarkashi earthquake.