Icy flood that killed at least 41 had been feared for years

NEW DELHI (AP):

Hundreds of rescuers dug through slushy debris and fast-flowing, icy water Friday in a search for survivors after a glacial lake overflowed and burst through a dam in India’s Himalayan north, a disaster that many had warned was possible for years.

The flood began in the early hours of Wednesday, when water overflowed a mountain lake. It smashed through a major hydroelectric dam downstream and then poured into the valley below, where it killed at least 41 people and forced thousands to flee their homes. Police said that 22 of the dead were found kilometres (miles) downriver in West Bengal state, while 100 people are still missing.

The disaster underscores a climate dilemma that’s pitted local environmental activists who say the dams are too dangerous against authorities pursuing a national green energy agenda for years.

It wasn’t clear what triggered the deadly flood, the latest to hit northeast India in a year of unusually heavy monsoon rains. Experts pointed to intense rain, and a 6.2 magnitude earthquake that struck nearby Nepal on Tuesday afternoon, as possible contributors.

But the design and placement of the six-year-old Teesta 3 dam, the largest in Sikkim state, were controversial from the time it was built as part of an Indian push to expand hydropower energy. Local activists argued that the location was too dangerous and that the dam didn’t include enough safety measures.

A report compiled by the Sikkim State Disaster Management Authority in 2019 had identified Lhonak Lake as “highly vulnerable” to flooding that could breach dams and cause extensive damage to life and property.

The dam’s operator, and local agencies responsible for dam safety, did not respond to requests for comment Friday.

Rising temperatures cause glaciers to melt faster, making dam failures and catastrophic floods more likely, but India is counting on such dams to meet its ambitious clean energy goals.

The government aims to increase India’s hydroelectric dam output by half, to 70,000 megawatts, by 2030, and has approved hundreds of new hydroelectric dams to be built across the Himalayan region.

But the growing frequency and intensity of extreme weather, driven in part by climate change, puts many dams and the people living downstream from them at risk. Last month, dam breaches caused by Storm Daniel caused devastating damage to the city of Derna in Libya.

A 2016 study found that over a fifth of the 177 dams built close to Himalayan glaciers could fail if glacial lakes burst, including the Teesta 3 dam.

“We knew that this was coming,” said Gyatso Lepcha, general secretary of Affected Citizens of Teesta, an environmental organisation based in Sikkim. “The same can happen with other dams also,” he wrote in a statement that called for a safety review of all dams in the state.

The Teesta 3 hydropower project, built on the Teesta River, took nine years and cost US$1.5 billion to construct. The project was capable of producing 1,200 megawatts of electricity – enough to power 1.5 million Indian homes – and began operation in 2017.

“Despite being the biggest project in the state, there were no early warning systems installed even though the glacier overflowing was a known risk,” said Himanshu Thakkar of the non-governmental organization South Asian Network for Rivers, Dams and People.

Thakkar said authorities failed to apply the lessons from a 2021 dam breach in Himalayan state of Uttarakhand that killed 81 people, allowing an “eerily similar” disaster to occur.

India’s National Disaster Management Agency said Friday that it plans to set up early warning systems at most of India’s 56 known at-risk glacial lakes.