Himalayan disaster explained
The Rishi Ganga River rises in the shadow of Nanda Devi (7,816m), India s second highest mountain. Credit: Sumod K Mohan / Wikicommons
A devastating flood last week on the upper reaches of the Rishi Ganga River, in India’s northern state of Uttarakhand, is a stark warning of the hazards of hydropower development under the dual threats of climate change and young, unstable mountains, scientists said last Friday in a webinar hosted by the The Earth Institute at Columbia University, New York, US.
The flood came thundering down the Alaknanda River, a Ganges River headstream, and hit two dams (one still under construction), smashing both and killing dozens of people, including construction workers caught unawares at the second dam site.
In photos: The story of Nepal s first, and now nearly forgotten, hydropower project
By Ramesh Bhushal
On 22 May, 1911, at around 6.30 pm, the erstwhile King of Nepal Prithvi Bir Bikram Shah inaugurated Nepal’s first and South Asia’s second hydropower in Kathmandu by turning on the lights in Tudikhel located at the centre of the city. The Chandra Jyoti Electric Power station, named after the then Prime Minister Chandra Shumsher Rana, had an installed capacity of 500 kilowatts and took about four years and nearly one-million-days of work to complete. Built to light the palaces of the autocratic Rana rulers, the power station used water from two spring sources 12 kilometres south of Kathmandu.