Did Govt's flood forecasting & embankments help?

Posted by: "mediavigil@yahoo.co.in" mediavigil@yahoo.co.in povertyfree77

Mon Aug 27, 2007 8:02 am (PST)

Did Govt's flood forecasting & embankments help?

Flood forecasting has been recognized as one of the most important, reliable and cost-effective non-structural measures for flood management.

Central Water Commission, Ministry of Water Resources has set up a network of forecasting stations covering all important flood prone interstate rivers.

The forecasts issued by these stations are used to alert the Public and to enable the administrative and engineering agencies of the States/UT's to take appropriate measures.

Central Water Commission started flood-forecasting services in 1958 with the setting up of its first forecasting station on Yamuna at Delhi Railway Bridge.

The website of Ministry of Water Resources claims that it has at present a vast network of 945 hydrological observation stations and issues level forecast for 145 sites and inflow forecasts of 28 dam barrage sites located on main rivers.

It also says that "The web site provides latest forecasts issued by the divisions of CWC." but if one visits it one only find one message: "The page cannot be found".

Hundreds of people are reported to have lost their lives and many more lost everything they owned when the waters rose in North Bihar.

For people across 300 villages in Koshi, flood and waterlogging is a yearlong problems because the very embankments that are meant to stop the flood have stopped it for good letting water stagnate.

General feeling is that it is the contractors, politicians and bureaucrats who stand to gain from the projects set up to build and maintain these embankments. Over several decades thousands of kilometers of embankments have been built but flood prone areas in have more than doubled.

Victims of flood do not have any voice in whose name newer and bigger embankments are being built.