Standalone dredging in Brahmaputra will be futile: River Science expert

NEW DELHI: Standalone dredging in the Brahmaputra as planned by the Ministry of Road Transport, Highways and Shipping will be futile, argues Nayan Sharma, professor at IIT Roorkee and UK’s University of Nottingham. “Sediment generated per year in the Brahmaputra is alarmingly high at about 1 billion tonnes, five times as much as in China’s Huang He (Yellow River). The Rs 400 crore that the Centre has sanctioned for dredging the Brahmaputra will go down the drain unless the catchment area treatment is first done, as in the Yellow River,” says Sharma who worked in Assam government’s water resources department before joining IIT-Roorkee’s department of water resources development and management in 1983. Sharma, who specialises in river engineering, did his doctorate on the Brahmaputra.

“You can’t put the cart before the horse. Dredging is the second step. Unless sedimentation is controlled by catchment area treatments, including massive afforestation, dredging will be meaningless. The more you dredge, the more sediment will be collected,” the professor told ET Magazine.

Earlier this week, Sharma gave a Powerpoint presentation on water management of the Brahmaputra at a function in Delhi organised by the Delhi Alumni Association Assam. He explained the nitty-gritty of the Chinese model of bringing down the annual sedimentation from 1,400 million tonnes in the early 1980s to 200 million tonnes now, thereby reducing the flood manifold.

For Assam, the flood is an annual disaster that takes lives and destroys properties; 79 people have lost their lives in this year’s flood. In an earlier interview to ET Magazine, Assam CM Sarbananda Sonowal had confirmed that the first phase of dredging in the Brahmaputra from Sadiya to Nimatighat (near Jorhat) will begin this winter. “The water-carrying capacity of the Brahmaputra has gone down, causing floods during monsoon,” he said.

Later, Minister for Road Transport, Highways and Shipping Nitin Gadkari announced that `400 crore is sanctioned for dredging in the Brahmaputra.