Centre forms panel to study Yamuna flood management

The Union government has constituted a committee to conduct a flood management study of the Yamuna from the Hathnikund barrage in Haryana to the Okhla barrage in Delhi, officials aware of the development said. The committee held its first meeting on September 4, they said, adding that it will submit its report within six months.

The development comes after incessant rain in Delhi and states upstream led to the Yamuna swelling to a record 208.33m in July, inundating large parts of the Capital in some of the worst flooding the city had seen in decades.

The flood management wing of the ministry of Jal Shakti, in a letter to the governments of Delhi, Haryana, and Uttar Pradesh, said that the committee has been tasked with identifying possible drainage congestion in the Capital in case the Yamuna is in spate.

“The extensive flooding in river Yamuna during July 2023 necessitated giving a fresh look for flood management of the river in its reach between Hathnikund and Okhla barrage,” the August 6 communique said.

The 14-member panel will be headed by the Central Water Commission (CWC) chairman, and will include representatives of the National Remote Sensing Centre in Hyderabad, the director of the Central Water and Power Research Station in Pune, and senior officers from the Delhi, Haryana, and Uttar Pradesh governments.

The committee will also review the utility and functional requirement of the ITO barrage in Delhi — a bone of contention between the Aam Aadmi Party-led government in the Capital, and the Bharatiya Janata Party-led Haryana government, which controls it.

The decision to “review the utility of ITO barrage in present context” is significant in the backdrop of Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal accusing the Haryana government of being responsible for waterlogging in the Capital since five gates of the barrage could not be opened at the time.

The panel will also examine the feasibility of some innovative measures, such as creating underground reservoirs for flood moderation like in Tokyo.

The Yamuna originates at the Yamunotri glacier on the south-western slope of the Bandarpunch peaks of the lower Himalayas in Uttarakhand. There are six barrages on the main course of the Yamuna — Dakpathar, Hathnikund, Wazirabad, ITO, Okhla, and Mathura.

Before its confluence with the Ganga at in Prayagraj district of Uttar Pradesh, important tributaries such as Hindon, Tons, Pabbar, Chambal, Sindh, Betwa and Ken join the river.

The panel will also develop a 2-D mathematical model for the reach of the river from 10km upstream of the Wazirabad barrage and up to 10km downstream from the Okhla barrage for an estimation of the submergence area.

The panel will also prepare digital terrain models up to 200m on either side of the river from its banks, using a combination of drone and hydrographic survey.

The Centre has also proposed the study of 10 points between the Hathnikund and Okhla barrages, including a detailed catchment representative rainfall analysis to compare the floods of 1978 and 2023, the carrying capacity of river between the two barrages, and the maximum water level at salient locations.