Melamchi, Nepal — It started with a sudden 9-degree Fahrenheit temperature rise around a Himalayan glacier. Then there was an explosion. A deluge of molten ice descended at a rate of 2.5 million gallons per second, unleashing a sludge landslide that wiped out everything in its path.
Old trees, fertile fields, houses, power lines, bridges, everything was swallowed up. Five people died. But the flood didn’t just leave this lush valley unrecognizable. Its effects spread dozens of miles to Kathmandu, Nepal’s capital. Kathmandu has been waiting for decades for what many in the world take for granted: clean tap water.
The torrent that devastated the Melamchi river basin last June destroyed projects to supply piped water to cities that have relied on public vents connected to underground aquifers since the 6th century. did. Started in 1972, the project survived on hundreds of millions of dollars in international loans through political turmoil and regime changes until weeks after its main intake was buried under flood debris. it was just not working.
The water that finally springs from a household tap in Kathmandu suddenly dries up with cheers from rooftops. Despite mounting evidence of the risk of Himalayan glaciers melting, the project never took climate change seriously. And now it has to go back to the drawing board.
Intended as a symbol of development in Nepal, one of Asia’s poorest countries, the ruined water system is a result of the slow progress of donor-financed mega-projects and the rapid pace brought on by a warming planet. Revealed a large mismatch between changing threats.
“I think we were crazy to finish this project,” said Arnaud Khoshwa, the project’s main funder and president of Nepal’s Asian Development Bank.
Lessons from Melamchi will be shared around the world as development banks and civil engineers assess other large-scale projects in developing countries for their ability to withstand the whims of climate change, and consider ways to hold them accountable if they fail. may reverberate.
idea
Kathmandu is one of the wettest capitals in the world. During the annual monsoon, a stream flows through the streets and into the swollen Bagmati River.
During the wet season, residents still use the free stone spout network for bathing and washing. The water supply, he arrived in 1895, was only available at Rana Palace, where royalty and dignitaries lived and worked.
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By the 1970s, it became increasingly clear that Kathmandu needed a modern water supply system. Once a stopover for climbers heading to Everest and other peaks, most of the inhabitants worked as rice farmers, but the city grew as it found a place at the end of the Hippie Trail. Its sublime landscapes, ancient temples and prestigious hashes have drawn young visitors from all over the world.
In the decades that followed, Kathmandu’s aquifer dried up as it grew at a breakneck pace to accommodate refugees from conflict, natural disasters and climate change.
King Mahendra, ruler of Nepal until 1972, was aware of these challenges. His ambition to make Nepal’s capital a tourist hotspot coincides with the so-called era of development, the era of large-scale infrastructure projects funded by the World Bank and other post-war institutions. I was doing it.
“We were in a rush to find investment projects everywhere,” said Dipak Gyawari, a water engineer who worked under Mahendra’s successor, King Birendra.
The World Bank has approached the government with plans to transport water from the Melamchi River to Kathmandu via tunnels. It works by gravity and does not require high technical expertise or expensive pumps.
The water is used to provide cheap electricity through hydroelectric power, with the capital having abundant drinking water and Terai, a major agricultural area, getting free irrigation.
Once construction began, the project was expected to be completed in seven to ten years. But according to a study co-authored by Gyawari for a government commission in 1987, even the Nepalese government’s modest initial goal of fixing the city’s leaky water pipes has fallen even after 15 years. remained unfinished.
The broader water project remained in the concept stage for 20 years after its inception. When the government’s ten-year war against Maoist rebels ended in 2006, the Nepalese monarchy was gone, leaving a political void and a clear direction for projects.
All the while, the money kept pouring in. The price of the project he reached 464 million dollars. After the World Bank and the Norwegian and Swedish development agencies canceled the project, the Asian Development Bank took the lead and approved a loan of approximately $160 million to the Nepalese government.
“People wanted that big project because it brought money to a country where the government and other people could get money, not just water,” said Cheryl Collopy. water crisis. “
From the outset, the project was plagued with corruption, according to Nepalese government officials, international bankers and experts. Sher Bahadur Deuba, who was sacked as prime minister during a period of wartime instability, and some of his ministers were later indicted for corruption related to the Melamchi project. (Deuba is currently serving his fifth term as prime minister.)
In 2014, the Italian company hired to complete the tunnel abandoned the project after accusing Nepalese bureaucrats of extorting bribes from workers. Completed construction in May.
Then disaster struck. Flooding disrupted operations within hours of the start of testing that month. They reopened at the beginning of his April, but he only had six weeks of water before more devastating floods and landslides occurred.
Fifty years after the idea was first conceived, Nepal’s taxpayers are still being asked for about $420 million in loans, and the government is taking steps to bring drinking water to the arid capital. has not yet reached
“We are concerned that this kind of disaster could happen again if rainfall exceeds normal,” said Rajendra Sharma, a hydrologist and government technical adviser on the Melamchi project. I’m here.
climate change
When Gaurab KC, an assistant professor of forensic sociology, grew up in Kathmandu, the annual monsoon brought an air chorus of croaking frogs and jasmine-scented nightly.
However, many of the wetlands and paddy fields that have absorbed monsoon rains and raised the water table are due to the fact that the Kathmandu Valley has been the fastest urbanized region in Asia, with its population increasing from more than 500,000 in 1991 to much more. , then paved. By 2021, it will exceed 2 million.
Like most people in Kathmandu, Gaurav uses an ingenious system to pump and buy water for his family’s needs. He uses rainwater from his two rooftop tanks for washing and plumbing. He buys extra supplies from the water tanker to wash and drink his vegetables.
Pipe laying for the Melamchi project began in his neighborhood many years ago. “It’s like a myth or a story. Melamchi is coming,” Gaurav said.
Then came climate change. However, at the time of the project’s conception, global warming was a largely esoteric concept, and in the years that followed, its impact on upstream watersheds was poorly studied.
A series of natural disasters in Nepal has not changed that. In 2008, a river embankment burst and the ensuing flood displaced more than 3 million people. Four years later, a glacier-fed river overflowed in Pokhara, Nepal’s second city, causing devastating damage. In 2016, a nearby Chinese dam, including a glacial lake, burst and washed away a hydropower project in Nepal.
The last environmental impact assessment for the Melamchi Water Project was conducted in 2000. Little did anyone know that sediment basins above glaciers and valleys became unstable after a magnitude 7.8 earthquake hit Kathmandu in 2015.
“This project was designed a long time ago,” said Khoshova of the Asian Development Bank. “Our focus was to get the bloody thing done.”
aftermath
On the day of last year’s disaster, Sharmila Shrestha was cooking dinner when she received a call from relatives living upstream asking her to flee. Her family of four managed to escape to higher ground and returned home a few days later when the water receded. Not all neighbors survived.
Now, on rainy nights, she and her husband, Shyam Krishna, take turns keeping watch and listening to the roar of rocks crashing into the valley.
An early warning system has been installed that will sound a siren when the river reaches dangerous heights. Some residents who have lost their livelihoods are now paid to collect small rocks from the river bank and stack them in wire mesh boxes to build protective walls.
Shrestha and Krishna live with their two children on the top floor of a flood-ravaged house. It used to prosper as a tourist spot. From Kathmandu he was a two-hour drive away, a valley lined with trout-rich rivers and brightly painted houses. to the rice terraces.
The watermark is still visible above the kitchen stove on the third floor.
“My parents keep pushing me to move, but I have a deep attachment to this place.”
The couple built their first house together of mud and stone. The wall collapsed in the 2015 earthquake, killing the oldest child. Last year, they had just finished painting the walls of a new house built of reinforced concrete when a muddy flood hit.
“Everyone complimented us when I finished the house,” she said. “Now nobody comes to visit.”