Nepal dams won't stop Indian floods

Joydeep Gupta in China Dialogue: “Every monsoon when there is a flood in Bihar, including this year right now, local politicians blame Nepal and the lack of dams there” For decades, Indian planners working to harness the waters of the Ganges and its tributaries have believed building dams in Nepal will save Bihar and eastern Uttar Pradesh from the floods that occur almost every year. A recent comprehensive study led by the World Bank says this belief is no more than a myth.



The belief was that there were substantial upstream reservoir storage possibilities in the Ganges basin that straddles India, Nepal and Bangladesh. But the Ganges Strategic Basin Assessment (SBA) coordinated by the World Bank and carried out by experts in the region has found that the largest 23 dams that have been conceived would only hold an additional 13 percent of the annual flow of water. The preliminary findings of the SBA have been presented to government officials in all three countries and were unveiled in public at the World Water Week in Stockholm.



The experts working with the South Asia Water Initiative (SAWI) coordinated by the World Bank found that in terms of flood control, there would be little basin-wide effect of upstream storage, and that effects were unlikely at the sub-basin level either. The models – developed by the Institute of Water Management in Bangladesh, the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi and RMSI, a consultancy firm in India, and vetted by SAWI experts – showed that at the sub-basin level, the dams would reduce peak flows, but would not necessarily reduce floods. Most rivers in the basin are largely embanked, and local rainfall and embankment failures cause the most flooding, the study found....



Bihar flooding in 2008, shot by Sharada Prasad, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

Effective disaster reduction steps for Pakistan

Dawn (Pakistan): International aid agency Oxfam has said that an effective disaster reduction mechanism could have prevented the effects of fresh flooding in southern areas of Pakistan. It urged the government to urgently spend at least two per cent of its district budget on disaster risk reduction measures. “Failure to develop and implement effective disaster reduction relief measures after the lessons learnt from mega floods of 2010 will keep crippling country’s economy,” Oxfam said in a statement issued here on Thursday to mark the World Humanitarian Day.



The new flooding has put an additional stress on the government’s limited resources at a time when even a year after the 2010 floods many reconstruction and rehabilitation needs are still unmet, including the repair of embankments. This has particularly put the flood-prone areas at greater risk as the monsoon rains intensify. The fresh flooding has increased the number of those needing shelter, making 60,000 people homeless together with 800,000 people who are still without proper homes after the 2010 floods.



“Humanitarian assistance provides valuable and life-saving assistance to those in need during crises. However, it is the communities that face and cope with the first wave of disaster themselves before the government and aid workers can start their rescue and relief operations.



“Therefore, it is extremely important to ensure that communities are better prepared for disasters so that they are less reliant on outside assistance and can help themselves by mitigating losses at an early stage of disaster,” said Neva Khan, head of Oxfam in Pakistan. She said: “It is unfortunate that despite being a disaster-prone country people still continue to suffer year after year, and absence of effective disaster reduction relief measures is the main reason....

Britons face insurance ‘crisis’ as UK trims flood defence

Ed Ballard in Bloomberg: ...Direct Line and Aviva Plc (AV/) are among British insurers threatening to tear up an agreement with the government that commits them to cover high-risk properties, even after claims rose threefold to 4.5 billion pounds in the last decade, because the U.K. is cutting spending on flood defenses. Smaller insurers not party to the so-called Statement of Principles are also cherry-picking low-risk homes and undercutting rivals, according to Aviva’s head of claims, Dominic Clayden.



...Britain’s coalition government is engaged in the biggest spending cuts since the Second World War to cut the country’s record budget deficit. It will reduce spending on flood defense to about 2.1 billion pounds over the next four years, from 2.36 billion pounds over the last four years, according to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.



Government projects range from the construction of concrete and metal barriers, to building pumping stations and replanting forests in floodplains. One plan to build a 150 million-pound barrier to protect the city of Leeds, England from the River Aire, is now unlikely to be fully funded by the government, according to the U.K.’s Environment Agency. That means “we may not be able to provide the same scale of defenses as originally planned,” the EA said. “Many schemes in areas at high risk will continue to receive full funding from government, whilst others will receive large contributions that will go a long way towards meeting the amount needed,” DEFRA said in an e-mailed statement.



...ABI members agreed to subsidize the insurance of risky properties until June 2013 by charging homeowners in safer areas more, according to the agreement. Homeowners in affected areas only pay 42 percent of the true cost of their insurance, according to data published by Axa SA (CS) last year. “While in force to 2013, the Statement of Principles is unsustainable for future use and was agreed under very different circumstances,” said Kate Syred, home commercial director of Direct Line in an e-mailed statement. “Since then our knowledge of flooding risk and its management is more advanced.”...



Some flooding at Victoria Station in London, shot by Frankie Roberto

Western Australia coastal towns among most at risk in the world

Courtney Trenwith in the Sydney Morning Herald: Towns along Western Australia's coastline are among the most susceptible to climate change in the world with the areas of Mandurah, Busselton, Rockingham and Bunbury under particular threat of flooding and coastal erosion, a new Climate Commission report reveals. The report estimates between 18,700 and 28,900 residential buildings – worth up to $7.7 billion - are at risk of inundation due to rising sea levels.



A further 2100 commercial buildings – more than in all other states – and up to 9100 kilometres of roadway along the coast of the state are also under threat. "A sea-level rise of 50 centimetres will lead to very large increases in the frequency of coastal flooding; flooding that is currently considered a one-in-100 year event would occur every year in most parts of WA and even more frequently in Perth," the report says.



"Flooding events are likely to damage cities, towns and the supporting infrastructure in low-lying coastal areas and will lead to erosion of sandy beaches." Sea levels along the WA west coast have been rising about double the global average since 1990, at between 7.1 millimetres and 7.4 millimetres per year, according to the commission....



Northern suburbs of Perth on the western Australia coast, from NASA

Heavier rain major cause of Tsolum River flooding

Philip Round in Canada.com: Experts probing why the Tsolum River has been running so high in recent years have concluded it's mainly because it's raining more heavily and frequently than in the past. Suggestions that the impact of logging operations might be contributing to much greater run-off from the watershed "cannot explain the occurrence of high flows on the Tsolum River in 2009 and 2010."



But they acknowledge that assessment is based on available information, particularly from TimberWest itself, about changes to its forest management practices over the past 50 years. Northwest Hydraulic Consultants (NHC) was commissioned to conduct the detailed flood hydrology investigation of the watershed by three partners who shared the cost - Comox Valley Regional District, the City of Courtenay and TimberWest Forest Corporation. Its final report will be presented to the regional district this afternoon (Tuesday).



Local governments got involved because of concerns over more frequent flooding in Courtenay and why it might be happening. Around 2010 there were what NHC call "three flood events" involving the Tsolum - one of them the biggest in 46 years of measuring flows. But having analyzed available statistics, the consultants found the Tsolum was not unusual in carrying huge quantities of water at that time.



"There have been a number of large floods on the east coast of Vancouver Island during the last five years that have either been the largest or second largest over the period of record," the report notes. "These include floods on the Tsolum, Puntledge, Oyster, Quinsam, Englishman, Cowichan and Koksilah Rivers." And having compared the data for several rivers between Duncan and Port Hardy, NHC concludes: "The recent upsurge in flooding is closely associated with extreme precipitation events."...



Locator map of British Columbia