Design change makes Baglihar unviable: India

NEW DELHI—In a severe jolt to the state of Jammu and Kashmir, the World Bank-appointed neutral Swiss expert Raymond Lafitte has reportedly ordered redesigning of the 450-MW Baglihar hydroelectric power project on the Chenab river in Doda district and reduction of the dam’s height by 1.5 metres.
Officials here are, however, taking solace in pointing out that the expert rejected Pakistan’s demand to scrap the project on the ground that it violated the Indus Water Treaty (IWT). The expert has also turned downIslamabad’s demand of changes in the design of the main chute spillways.
In the final meeting for arbitration in Washington early this week, the officials said three specific changes recommended by the expert to meet Pakistan’s objections would, however, make the project economically unviable and as such a policy decision would have to be taken whether to abandon or complete the project on which the government has already sunk more than Rs 3.5 billions.
Lafitte, a former Swiss dam safety expert and professor electric power plants and water resources development at Federal Institute of Technology at Lausanne picked up by the World Bank to settle the dispute, has called reducing the dam’s height by 1.5 metres, construct a parapet wall of 1.2 metres and raise the power intake “cill” for installation of turbines by three metres.
The last one has sent shivers to the project engineers as it would involve redesigning of the entire structure and involves fresh model studies. The project engineers insist that even small changes in the design would bury the project but they were not able to say if the new design would reduce the capacity to produce 450 megawatts of electricity.
The Jammu and Kashmir Government, which is constructing the project, does not want to give up easily. It plans to commission the National Irrigation Research Institute of India’s prestigious Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) at Roorkee, which had designed the original model, to study the feasibility of changing the design and the extent it can be changed to meet the prescriptions of Lafitte.
“We have already invested over Rs 3.5 billions and the total cost of the project has already gone up to Rs 5.2 billions. The additional amount to be incurred on the change of design would, however, make per unit cost uneconomical,” the state government sources said. The project was beset with problems right from inception and the state government had only recently sought Rs 1 trillion from New Delhi to complete it. It will require much more to meet the changes in the design.
The project was supposed to start power generation first by December 2005 and then by 2007. The new target also now seems impossible as the Lafitte’s arbitration has given a setback of at least two years.—Agencies