Nepal floods cripple hydropower as rebuild shifts to safer infrastructure

Workers are clearing mud from a flood-hit Nepal power station as rescue efforts continue at damaged hydropower sites. The disaster has intensified scrutiny of how the country rebuilds critical infrastructure in high-risk valleys.

In Short

• About 700 megawatts went offline, disrupting supply across badly affected districts
• Up to 900 hydropower workers remain unaccounted for, many trapped underground
• Roads, bridges, schools and hospitals suffered heavy destruction in mountain valleys

Workers in central Nepal were clearing thick mud from a flood-hit power station on Sunday in an effort to restore a key electricity supply serving more than 20,000 people. But even as debris was removed from equipment buried in last week’s catastrophic floods, experts said the larger question for Nepal was how to rebuild power lines, roads, bridges, schools and health facilities without recreating the same risks.

The flooding has badly hit Nepal’s hydropower network, with an estimated 700 megawatts knocked offline, or about 10 per cent of the country’s power capacity. According to the Independent Power Producers’ Association, Nepal, up to 900 workers from around a dozen hydropower projects are unaccounted for, with hundreds believed to be trapped in tunnels. In Nepal and China together, more than 900 people have died and 4,700 are missing.

Hydropower projects that were operational or under construction were fully or partly destroyed in Rasuwa, Nuwakot and Dhading, among the worst-affected districts. Officials said many workers had taken shelter in tunnels and are now stuck there while rescue efforts continue.

“Authorities have to take a hard look in the mirror now and ask how they will be rebuilding in these places. They will also have to take a close look at other projects in Nepal that have not been built yet, whether they’ll be approved after this event,” said Jakob Steiner, a geoscientist at the University of Graz in Austria, who is currently based in Dhaka, Bangladesh.

Steiner said, “The tunnels are built to access hydropower infrastructure and to divert water,” adding that they are large enough for trucks to pass through. He said smaller floods can sometimes be managed with diversions that keep debris and strong flows away from costly infrastructure and tunnels. But in an event on the scale of the latest flood, he said, physical defences may be overwhelmed, making early warning the most important protection for people.

Apart from hydropower projects, tens of kilometres of roads, several bridges and essential buildings such as schools and hospitals have been destroyed. Ramraj Narasimhan, senior director at the Coalition for Disaster Resilient Infrastructure, said rebuilding should focus on keeping services running rather than trying to make every structure impossible to damage. “If it gets damaged, let it get damaged, but can we build in redundancy in the system?” he said.

Narasimhan said this could mean choosing safer locations, creating alternate routes, arranging backup power, improving early warning systems and using financial tools such as insurance to speed up recovery. He said risk assessments should study where rivers bend, where slopes are unstable and where one failure could cut off several communities. His organisation estimates that USD 124 billion worth of Nepal’s infrastructure is exposed to climate-driven disasters, with the potential for hundreds of millions of dollars in losses each year. A report by the coalition earlier this year said Nepal’s average annual losses from disasters are nearly USD 760 million, while the national disaster fund is only a small part of that amount.

Climate scientists said the Himalayan region is warming faster than many other parts of the world and is especially vulnerable to the effects of human-caused climate change. Reports by the Kathmandu-based International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development said glaciers across the Hindu Kush Himalaya are losing ice at a faster rate, while thawing permafrost, unstable slopes, glacial lakes and more erratic rainfall are increasing the risks of floods, landslides and debris flows.

The risks are especially high for Nepal because hydropower is central to its electricity grid and is also important for economic growth and export earnings. Narasimhan said much of Nepal’s potential lies in run-of-river hydropower, which means projects are closely linked to steep river valleys where hazards can spread quickly. Steiner said the flood was detected at the China-Nepal border after moving rapidly from its source, leaving little warning time upstream. But he said there was still time as it moved downstream towards hydropower sites, raising questions over whether workers could have been warned earlier.

The disaster is also likely to bring closer scrutiny of where future projects are cleared. Himanshu Thakkar, coordinator of the South Asia Network on Dams, Rivers and People, said environmental, social and disaster-risk assessments must reflect the specific terrain and past hazards in each valley, backed by land-use rules and stronger accountability. He said hydropower projects can become “force multipliers” when large structures, debris and altered river channels add to downstream damage, and argued that Nepal should also look at more decentralised solar power as part of a wider energy mix.

As Nepal deals with the immediate damage, the challenge is not only to restore power and rebuild damaged infrastructure quickly, but also to decide what should be rebuilt, where it should be rebuilt and how to reduce the risk from the next flood.

With PTI Inputs

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