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mmForwarded to the Portal by: Himanshu Thakkar, SANDRP

PROJECT PROMOTER IS CHAIRING ENVIRONMENT CLEARANCE COMMITTEE LETTER SENT TO ENVIRONMENT MINISTER: TEST FOR UPA'S CLAIMS ON GOVERNANCE

For over two years now, Mr. P Abhraham who is on the Board of several hydropower and dam companies has been chairing the Ministry of Environment and Forests' Expert Appraisal Committee on River Valley and Hydropower projects. The committee, set up under the EIA Notification 2006 and EPA 1986, screens proposals for dams and hydropower projects for clearances at various stages. The committee also takes decisions on several very crucial policies governing the clearances for these projects. There is clear conflict of interest here between Abraham's role as director of companies and as this most crucial regulatory position in the Ministry of Environment and Forests. Over the past two years, there has been at least six occasions when a project of the companies where Abraham is a director has come for clearance before the committee he chairs. This is a completely unacceptable situation and a number of social and environment groups have written to the New Union Environment Minister to remove Abraham from this position, before the next meeting of the committee he chairs happens (it is scheduled for June 15-16, 2009).

Among many other power and dam companies, Abraham is on the Board of Lanco Infratech, GVK Industries Ltd, JSW Energy Ltd, PTC Ltd, Nagarjun Construction and Maharashtra Power Generation Company. Some of the projects from such companies that came up before the EAC that Abraham chairs over the last two years include the 3000 MW Demwe Hydropower project (Arunachal Pradesh), the 76 MW Phata Byung HEP (Uttarakhand), the 76 MW Rambara HEP (Uttarakhand), the 170 MW Bogudiyar-Sirkari Bhyol HEP (Uttarakhand), the 200 MW Mapang Bogudiyar HEP (Uttarakhand) and the 260 MW Kuther HEP (Himachal Pradesh). Abraham has been abstaining from the meetings whenever these projects came up before the EAC, but this is clearly not sufficient.

   CAREWATER's recent solicitation for comments on IWP blog (click here),  on their research study on dugwell recharge draws attention to a little-known programme of the government of India on decentralized groundwater recharge through the use of farmer d

December this year in Copenhagen the countries of the world are going to sign a treaty that will change our life as we know it. Their commitments today will affect our quality of life tomorrow.

A sharing workshop on groundwater organised by ACWADAM (Advanced Center for Water Development and Management) in Pune on 21/22nd May 2009 saw some very good presentations being made. Dr Tushaar's Shah's keynote speech provided an amazing big picture of groundwater use in agriculture. The presentation can be viewed on slideshare and the entire speech is available on YouTube in 4 parts.

"Work in progress", is an article by Jean Dreze and Christian Oldiges, that appeared in the Feb. 14-27, 2009 issue of the Frontline Magazine, that compares the data from the NREGA website (www.nrega.nic.in) related to the first two years (2006-07 and 2007-08) of implementation of the NREGA.

Guest Post by: Lenneke Knoop, The Water Channel Image and Content Courtesy: The Water Channel The new version of www.thewaterchannel.tv has been launched. TheWaterChannel is a dedicated web-based video channel on water. It wants to be a main repository for video material on water and a main support and medium in promoting better water management.

TheWaterChannel now contains over 150 water related videos with new material coming in daily. The new version has several improved features and much more functions including improved uploading services, several technical improvements and news feed subscription.

Guest post on the Portal by Sunderrajan Krishnan, CAREWATER, (Center for Action, Research and Education on Water), www.carewater.org . === As a response to water stress in hard rock areas of the country, the Government of India has designed the Artificial Programme on Dug Well Recharge aimed at rejuvenating hard rock aquifers across the country. The idea is to divert rainfall runoff into open wells as a means of harvesting rainfall runoff and increasing recharge into aquifers. Currently as of April 2009, the program is underway in a couple of states, mainly in Gujarat and Tamil Nadu, and other states are following suit. The program is ambitious in the sense that it aims to bring in millions of dug well owning farmers towards recharging. How will such a program be implemented, monitored and channeled so that the results are achieved to satisfaction? CAREWATER has designed a network of partners and is conducting studies to understand Dug well recharge and providing feedbacks to this national programme on artificial dug well recharge. Towards this purpose, since September 2008 we have created a partner base of organizations who along with our expertise are carrying out ground studies and analysis. Some of these results are available now on our website http://www.carewater.org (Please click on the link at the bottom of the homepage). We hope to keep updating this page as the program continues and wish to have more partners join our endeavor. In particular we have published a study of dug well recharge. The study is summarized below. We would like a larger discussion of the results of the study. Your comments below will be very useful to take this project forward more effectively.

The purpose of the consultation was also to identify areas of collaboration in advocacy, capacity building and working with people at the grassroot levels and simultaneously influence policy-making at the local, regional and international levels. The objectives of the workshop were -

Image and Content Courtesy: Water Alternatives (WaA)