The reason for renewing this interest will be evident in the next post when another prediction will be made.
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Dams that burst the earth by John Goss
No Richter Scale can measure the grief of
families affected by the earthquake epicentred near the town of Bhuj in January
this year. While yet another catastrophe claimed the lives of many thousands
the cost of regeneration, rehabilitation and relief is going to run into
millions and take many years. A billion pounds might turn out to be a
conservative estimate. Some of this will be paid for by international aid of
which Tony Blair has pledged ten million pounds. Only the most heartless of
people would deny aid to a grief-stricken earthquake region. Yet this
earthquake may have been avoided. Or at least the magnitude of it diminished.
Paying for avoidable catastrophes is bad economics.
It has long been known that dams can cause
earthquakes. As the death-toll rises daily questions need to be asked why
permission to construct large-dams like the Sardar Sarovar dam on the Narmada
river was ever granted, especially since the World Bank ceased to fund the
project in 1993 due to concerns that it was neither economically nor
ecologically viable. More important in their eyes was concern that the needs of
the indigenous population would not be served. For similar reasons Japan pulled
funds in 1990. Too late now, but their concerns were well-founded. Their
findings were ignored by the Indian government.
More than thirty years ago Gordon Rattray
Taylor in the Doomsday Book warned
"The prospect now looms of man being able to cause earthquakes at will,
or, what is more probable, of doing so by mistake." He was talking about
shifts and slippages in the crust of the earth caused by the sheer weight of
water in large-scale dams. The link between earthquakes and dams was first made
in 1945 by D. S. Gardner. He showed that Lake Mead, an artificial reservoir
created by the building of the Boulder (now Hoover) dam in Colorado, was
responsible for resultant earthquakes in that region. Lake Mead began to fill
in 1935. As the height and weight of water in the dam increased so did the
magnitude of the earthquakes. When the lake was full a pressure of 25 billion
tons of water brought a quake with a Richter reading of 5. Once this link was
made subsequent dams and subsequent earthquakes confirmed the findings until
today no scientist who valued his or her reputation would deny the connection.
Predicting whether or where a resultant
earthquake is likely to occur when dams are filled is an imprecise science, so
imprecise most earthquake predictors ignore prediction altogether. The reason
is some big dams do not appear to cause earthquakes or tremors at all. While
others clearly do. Obviously building a dam in an area prone to earthquakes is
asking for trouble. Yet this happens. Depending on viewpoint resultant
earthquakes can either be blamed on the dam or an inescapable truth that there
are always earthquakes in that region. All dams today have seismic monitoring
instruments built into their walls, a clear indication that there is an
accepted connection between the two events — filling dams and earthquakes.
More than two hundred kilometres from the
epicentre of the Bhuj earthquake a dam is being filled. In June 1999 the water
at the dam on the Narmada river in Gujurat rose from 80.3 metres to 88 metres
in three months following a supreme court decision permitting this increase.
This overturned a ruling made four years earlier which put a stay on further
development. India should have learnt
its lesson from history. Sadly, it did not.
On December 10, 1967 following a series of
tremors after the construction of the Koyna Dam an earthquake with a Richter
reading of 6.4 took place. One hundred and seventy seven people in the town of
Koynanagar, 150 kilometres south east of Bombay, were killed while damage and
disruption was widespread throughout India. There had previously been no
earthquakes in this region.
Like the ground itself the subtle emphasis
of the earthquake argument had moved long before the Sardar Sarovar project was
underway. Concentration shifted to whether the dam would survive the impact of
an earthquake. Nobody with influence questioned whether it would actually cause
one anymore.
Early in 1991 there was outcry concerning
the $2 billion Tehri Dam Project at the foot of the Himalayas. This had
financial support from "green" activist Mikhail Gorbachev’s Soviet
government. Scientists, however, claimed the dam was technically unsafe. Here
again a case was put for the inhabitants of the region. Much concern was shown
for the likely earthquake impact on the dam rather than the dam's impact on the
earth. It was being constructed in a known seismically active region. The main
fears centred on what would happen downstream if the dam burst — not an
unreasonable concern. According to the New Scientist it was only designed to
withstand a quake of 7.2 magnitude.
October of that year saw the worst
earthquake Delhi could remember. It killed more than 500 people, injured more
than 3000 others and left thousands homeless. The main quake measured 6.1 on
the Richter scale. Its epicentre was close to Tehri.
Construction of the Sardar Sarovar dam, the
biggest of 30 planned large dams, was not without its opposition though scant
emphasis was placed on the possibility of earthquakes. What was paramount in
the minds of the villagers immediately affected, and hardly surprising, was
where they would live and how they would make a living. Many of those who were
moved out returned to the area they knew. The river was their life. The
villagers' case was put in an impassioned letter of protest to the Indian
government from Bava Mahalia of Jalsindhi. “You," he said, "and all
those who live in cities, think that we who live in the hills are poor and
backward, like apes. 'Go to the plains of Gujarat. Your conditions will
improve. You will develop' — this is what you advise us... If it is true that
our situation will improve in Gujarat, then why aren't all of us ready to go
there?” He was ignored, like others before him.
Though not a supporter of the dam some of
the best arguments in favour of it were summarised by Geoff Holland, of the
Institute for Global Futures Research (IGFR) at Earlsville, Australia. Those
favouring its construction claimed it would bring benefits in the form of
improved conditions, the gift of farmland, roads, schools, electricity and
clean water. Was that what the villagers needed? It was not what many wanted.
Of those resettled, according anti-dam activist Shripad Dharmadhikary, more
than 500 families had returned to the Narmada Valley because of discontent.
On another level a battle-royal raged
between B.G. Verghese, a columnist from the Centre for Policy Research, in
favour of the dam, and Arundhati Roy, Booker prize-winning novelist, opposed to
it. Feathers flew.
Verghese's cause had the weight of big
money, big government, government organisations, commerce and industry behind
it. Arundhati Roy supported a cause which had little financial help, though she
gave all her Booker prize money, $34,000, towards the campaign. Further support
came from a few high-profile personalities, who like herself helped to put the
case, and the Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA), a human rights group opposed to the
dam. Arundhati wrote that big dams are to a nation's development what nuclear
arms are to its Military Arsenal — weapons of mass destruction. In response to
her essay “The Greater Common Good” Verghese taunted Arundhati claiming the
poetry of her language veiled inaccurate arguments.
“The SSP (Sardar Sarovar Project) displaced
are a charge on the project with a generous plan, budget and organisation for
their rehabilitation.” he said implying that Arundhati was a scaremongering
neo-Luddite. Since many of the villagers did not want this package she came
swiftly back at Verghese with another essay, equally prosaic, equally as
forceful in its propositions and equally unwavering as the first.
“Almost everyone who wants to rubbish my
argument begins by paying me extravagant, back-handed compliments about my
‘poetic writing’. Almost as though poetry by definition is imprecise,
unsubstantiated mush. Not something that Real Men who build Big Dams dabble
in.” She criticised the project for its effects on the environment as well as
on villagers. She further criticised it on grounds of cost.
Not to be outdone Verghese countered with a
statement that costs "have little meaning unless weighed against
corresponding benefits." Benefits he argued would "be far greater on
any count." He might be prepared now to stand back and reassess this claim
in the aftermath of an earthquake which he failed to foresee as a possibility.
Before this devastating catastrophe Geoff
Holland suggested a few alternatives. He predicted that greater benefits would
accrue from the Narmada river if multiple small dams were constructed to
provide "irrigation, electricity generation, and flood control without ...
soil erosion, deforestation, desertification, and displacement."
Though an imprecise science geologists and
earthquake monitors have a largely accepted theory that expansions and
contractions of land within known faults are the main causal factor of large
earthquakes. When the tectonic plate gives it gives at a weak, and normally
low-lying, point. A major fault runs along the foot of the Himalayas and it is
concluded that the expansion northwards of land south of this fault was
responsible for the latest earthquake.
In the absence of any real evidence one
possibility, of which there appears to be no research, is that large rivers act
as buffers for land expansion. Rivers are low-lying and thus potentially weaker
than the surrounding land. That being so their function would be similar to
gaps in large bridges which allow sections to expand and contract. If the depth
of the river is suddenly increased the give in the buffer is diminished thus
constricting expansion.
Tragedies happen everywhere. With some, for
example a train derailment, there are enquiries. Earthquakes are all too often
glibly dismissed as acts of God, even when they can happen to be acts of man.
There is no accountability. Hopefully one day governments granting aid will
enquire where else in the world big dams are being built and put a stop to
them. There are alternatives.
Robert Goodland, an expert on big dams and
representative of the World Bank, is concerned that when loan organisations
withdraw funding for non-viable projects there are no follow-up procedures to
monitor what recipients do next. He and
others like him question whether the World Bank should "retain
responsibility for a project even after the loan has been disbursed or cancelled
. . . until decommisioning, rehabilitation and restoration." The Indian
government took it upon itself to increase the height of the Sardar Sarovar dam
regardless of advice from the loan organization.
One Wednesday in July 1999 a seven year old
girl, Lata Vasave, from the tribal village of Domkhedi, became trapped in the
silt of Narmada Valley. She drowned. She had gone to carry water from the edge
of the Sardar Sarovar reservoir. Fetching water was something her ancestors had
done for centuries. Mud deposits washed down behind the dam were ten feet deep
and had already claimed the lives of cattle trying to reach the water’s edge.
Traditionally villagers have used the Narmada river as their source of domestic
water as well as for bathing and fishing. That day in 1999 a village mourned
the loss of a little girl. Today many of the same villagers relocated in towns
and cities struck by the earthquake, and others like them, are engulfed in
immeasurable grief — or dead themselves.
John
Goss is writing the biography of eighteenth century English novelist Robert
Bage (1730-1801). Eighteen months before it happened he warned of the
possibility of an earthquake in the Gujurat region.
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