{"id":20083230,"date":"2022-02-25T12:30:00","date_gmt":"2022-02-25T07:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thethirdpole.net\/?p=83230"},"modified":"2023-05-31T15:37:22","modified_gmt":"2023-05-31T10:07:22","slug":"riverbed-northern-india-being-hollowed-mining-concrete","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dialogue.earth\/en\/water\/riverbed-northern-india-being-hollowed-mining-concrete\/","title":{"rendered":"The river in northern India being hollowed out for concrete"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

It was around 5 AM on 19 October 2021, dark, drizzling and cold in the foothills of the Himalayas. \u201cA noise woke up my wife,\u201d says farmer Gopal Datt Sharma in Indirapuri village, near the city of Haldwani in Uttarakhand, northern India. She went out to the porch and saw that farms adjacent to their 1.6-hectare patch of wheat had vanished overnight. As she watched, the Sharma family\u2019s farmland collapsed into the Gaula River.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That day, the Sharmas and four other Indirapuri families lost their homes to a flash flood. A part of the Gaula bridge in Haldwani collapsed the same day. Many smaller bridges fell down after incessant and unseasonal rainfall, which blocked<\/a> the main road from the north Indian plains to Nainital city up in the mountains.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to government reports, the flood that washed away farms and bridges on 19 October was a natural calamity. In the past five years<\/a>, more than 37 bridges are reported to have collapsed in Uttarakhand, and more are on the brink.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"House<\/div>
Gopal Datt Sharma\u2019s house on the brink of collapse into the Gaula River. Throughout the Himalayan foothills, communities have lost their homes to flooding, which is being exacerbated by riverbed mining. (Image: Monika Mondal \/ The Third Pole)<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

In 2012, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said<\/a> that global warming was leading to the kind of erratic rainfall and cloudbursts that this region experienced well after the 2021 monsoon season should have ended. Little has been done to safeguard infrastructure and help communities build resilience against such climate change impacts<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Recommended<\/span><\/span><\/div><\/a>\n\n\n\n

What is actually happening on the Gaula and hundreds of other rivers in Uttarakhand \u2013 and all over India \u2013 is the opposite of building resilience. Instead, riverbeds are being mined in a way that multiplies flood risks. The state of the Gaula illustrates the situation across much of the Himalayan foothills and beyond in Asia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Gaula is one of the many small rivers that form the veins of the largest river basin in India, the Ganga<\/a>. The Gaula starts in the middle mountains of Uttarakhand, reaches the plains near the commercially important town of Haldwani and joins the Ramganga River, which in turn flows into the Ganga.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Graphic: The Third Pole<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

As the Gaula \u2013 and other rivers \u2013 reach the plains, they deposit a huge amount of boulders, stones, gravel and sand that they have carried down from the mountains. When riverbeds are mined, this material is removed for sale to the construction industry. Sometimes those carrying this out have a licence; sometimes they operate illegally.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The removal of all this material means water flows faster down the river and makes floods more dangerous. But objecting to such mining can also be dangerous. Bureaucrats and journalists<\/a> who raise concerns have been attacked<\/a>, some fatally. State governments continue to give out riverbed mining licences.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Plundering the riverbed<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

For much of the year, the spring-dependent Gaula carries little to no water. \u201cSuch rivers [normally] do not carry much water; nevertheless, the volume can increase up to 800 to 1,000 times when it rains,\u201d says Shekhar Pathak, an environmental historian based in nearby Nainital.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As a result, every monsoon the Gaula carries riverbed material down to Haldwani. For the rest of the year, constant operations on the riverbed scoop out sand, gravel and stones, then load it onto mules and horses or trucks. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The monetary value of riverbed material was realised as the world moved towards concrete construction. Pathak says, \u201cAs the country moved towards urbanisation, demand for the RBM [riverbed material] for construction activities exploded.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Gaula bridge at Haldwani that collapsed last year has been repaired, and now carries scores of vehicles at a time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"A<\/div>
A mule cart carries material excavated from one of Gaula\u2019s riverbed pits. The material will then be taken to a trader, located around 5 km away. (Image: Monika Mondal \/ The Third Pole)<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

When The Third Pole<\/a> visits the area in the last week of January 2022, riverbed mining has restarted a few metres away from the bridge. Some trucks are parked deep in the pits, some at ground level. Groups of 10-12 men surround the back of each truck, shovelling riverbed material into the vehicle. Mules and horses, some pulling carts, stay on or near the ground level.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s just the beginning,\u201d says one of the labourers. \u201cThe pits from last year\u2019s mining have been filled by the debris that came with the floods. Return in a few months, and you will see the big pits again.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How Haldwani\u2019s heart, the Gaula, is changing its pulse<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

These pits are connected to the flooding, Pathak explains. \u201cWhen mining is practised unscientifically, leaving pits and empty spaces, the river can change its course when it carries a lot of water.\u201d Uttarakhand\u2019s rainfall in October 2021 broke records<\/a>: it rained 500 millimetres in two days. The Gaula changed course and ravaged railway tracks at Kathgodam station next to Haldwani, as well as engulfing acres of farms and homes like the Sharmas\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Uttarakhand Forest Development Corporation (UFDC<\/a>) is a state-owned statutory body responsible for the commercial exploitation of state forest produce, which includes the bed of the Gaula, and therefore licensing for mining on the river bed. Speaking with The Third Pole, KN Bharti, regional manager of the UFDC, said: \u201cThe collapse of the Gaula bridge had nothing to do with the mining at all. If mining was one of the reasons for the collapse of the bridge, then all the bridges built on the rivers must have collapsed by now.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A few kilometres downstream of the Gaula bridge, near where the Sharmas\u2019 farm collapsed into the river, another labourer Subhash (he uses only one name) stays with many other migrant labourers from Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. They live in polyester tents right on the riverbed. Subhash has been digging the Gaula\u2019s riverbed at this location for the past 15 years. Every year, like many other labourers, he comes to Haldwani after Diwali (in October or November) and returns home before the monsoon arrives in June. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Sometimes it takes about an hour for 10-12 of us to fill a truck,” Subhash says. “Sometimes it may take longer.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Asked about the changes he has seen, Subhash replies: \u201cEarlier it was so easy to dig a few metres. But in the last few years, we cannot dig more than a few feet. Digging below it, we often reach the groundwater level. Not only deeper, the river has become so much wider.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Sharmas\u2019 Indirapuri neighbour Bhuvan (he uses one name) tells The Third Pole he has watched the level of the Gaula fall. \u201cEarlier, the river and our lands were at the same level, but when mining started about 15-20 years ago, slowly and steadily the riverbed went down, finally reaching about 20 feet deeper.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But even this lowered level is higher than the riverbed upstream and downstream. Mining stopped near the Sharmas\u2019 house a few years ago., which meant a small portion of the riverbed remained intact while there were deep pits upstream and downstream. Bhuvan thinks this relatively higher riverbed worsened floods in Indirapuri village.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Raj Bhagat Palanichamy, a geospatial analyst at the World Resources Institute, used satellite images to find out how the Gaula has changed its path over the past 20 years. \u201cThe shadows along the edges of the river in the map tell you how the depth of the river has increased over the period, and you can see how the river has changed its patterns,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n