Ask China to share hydrological data to avoid disasters: Ninong Ering to PM

Itanagar: A lawmaker from Arunachal Pradesh has urged Prime Minister Narendra Modi to ask his Chinese counterpart to share the latest hydrological data of Siang River, known as Brahmaputra in Assam and Yarlung Tsangpo in Tibet, which was not shared in the past two years.

Pasighat West MLA Ninong Ering in a letter to Modi on Thursday stated that the Siang River has once again become a threat for the people ofArunachal Pradesh and Assam after a landslide in the Nien-Ch'ing-Tang-Ku-La Shan East mountain range.

The legislator said the landslide which occurred due to earthquakes in the area has created a natural dam in Yigong Tsangpo, one of the major tributaries of Yarlung Tsangpo or Siang River in southern Tibet.

Around 15 earthquakes ranging between 4.0 and 5.0 magnitudes have reportedly occurred within a 300 square kilometre area upstream of the Yigong Tsangpo River in July. The earthquakes reportedly occurred in the area within a span of 20 days.

"The floods in Arunachal, Assam and other states of India have been very devastating this time, and if this dam bursts during this monsoon season then the downstream would be tenuous," the Congress MLA said.

The legislator said there are hundreds of glaciers in the region and the change in climate is accelerating the melting process.

"This is going to increase the floods," he said, adding that the risk of outburst floods from the glacial lakes is also going to increase in the future.

Ering, a former Lok Sabha MP said "automatic weather stations must be established at all border points from where the rivers flow into the country".

The Central Water Commission needs to collect and disseminate the flow rate data in advance. The water level data being disseminated at present is useless in hydrological modeling and flood assessment, he said.

The MLA further suggested that the State and National Disaster Management authorities and remote sensing centers need to work together with competent people to integrate precipitation and radar data, issue earthquake alerts.

"We need to hire people who are good at data analysis. Also there is a need for field work in the glacial regions of Arunachal to understand its risks," he said, adding that a holistic system upgrade for disaster risk assessment and dissemination of information to the public is the need of the hour.

State Disaster management director Atul Tayeng in a letter to the deputy commissioners of Siang, Upper Siang, East Siang and West Siang recently asked them to remain alert and prepared in case of an unlikely scenario of flood situation due to breach of the lake.

Tayeng issued the letter after the Union Home Minister in a report informed about the formation of the artificial lake on Yigong Tso at Tibet.

The report stated that the lake formed is more than 200 kilometers away from Indian border and concludes that in case of a breach the computed peak flood of 823 m3/sec is very less compared to the flood discharge in Brahmaputra when it enters India.

However, it is to be noted that the conclusion was derived based on the hydrological simulation study by assuming depth and using empirical formulas and hence cannot be used for real time operation and flood management, the report added.

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