- The Kusaha embankment's capacity is 9.5 lakh cusecs. But it was breached with just 1.44 lakh cusecs. Reason: silt deposits which raised the Kosi river bed.
- Annual monitoring and maintenance of the embankment, to be completed by June 15, was not carried out this year. This left weaker points vulnerable.
- Repair work suggested by field officers pared down by high-level panel KHLC. Rs 35 lakh maintenance work was needed for the spot that breached; only Rs 4 lakh sanctioned.
- The KHLC refused permission for three studs, which would have acted as additional checks against overflow. They were to have come up in the breach area.
- Early warnings faxed to the Bihar government's liaison office in Nepal didn't reach. The fax had been disconnected due to non-payment of bills.
- Lack of cooperation from the Nepalese army and workers did not help in the damage-control operations.
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That there is a culture of negligence is evident from the fact that the flow of the water, when it breached the embankment, was just 1.44 lakh cusecs compared to the 9.5 lakh cusecs the embankment was designed to withstand. That it overflowed at just about one-ninth its capacity was because the huge silt deposits on the riverbed had raised the water to dangerous levels. "If it was known that there was so much silt deposit, there should have been public acceptance of that and a declaration made by authorities that the embankment would be breached at a much lower level than it was designed for. This was clearly not done," says Himanshu Thakkar of the Delhi-based South Asia Network on Dams, Rivers and People (SANDRP). "And why wasn't desilting carried out at strategic points where the embankments had weakened?" he asks.
One would have expected some sense of urgency when it became clear in the first week of August that a flood was imminent. But the Bihar government continued to issue daily flood bulletins till August 17 stating that all was well with the embankments even as engineers struggled upstream to prevent an overflow. The alert was finally revised on August 18, the date of the breach. Even the three early warning faxes—the first on August 9—sent to the Bihar liaison office in Kathmandu were in vain: the fax machine was not working because of non-payment of bills! But it is not just these recent warnings that were ignored. Signs of an impending deluge came as early as 2004 with satellite images showing the Kosi's flow had begun moving to the left bank, exerting more pressure on the embankment. But, as usual, authorities at the Centre and state didn't react. When the government machinery finally acted, it was too late. "We began damage control on August 5. The flow was too strong...whatever we dumped in was swept away," says Harikeshwar Ram, superintendent engineer, flood control, Bihar water resources department. Labour problems in Nepal impeded work further.
The 2008 floods also serve as an indictment of embankments as a flood control measure. Dinesh Kumar Mishra, an expert on Bihar's rivers, points out that this year's calamity is the eighth instance where the Kosi has breached its embankments since the 1960s. "Each time, it is the same story of neglect," he says. Even a dam upstream would only be a temporary way out. When a dam—often cited as the best solution to Kosi's floods by some—was first proposed in 1937, engineers hastened to specify that it would silt up in just 37 years given the large sediment deposit Kosi brings along with it as it flows downhill. Moreover, the dam would have to be built in a zone prone to earthquakes and would involve, like any other dam, immense environmental and social costs.
Instead, the way out, suggests SANDRP's Thakkar, would be to rely on a more diverse catchment-based approach that depends on an extensive network of water-retaining bodies. "That would mean wetlands, much of which is being presently destroyed, lakes, ponds and groundwater recharge to help reduce the water inflow into the Kosi," he says. "We would also have to give up the idea that a flood necessarily implies a disaster. It's only human mismanagement that makes it one," he adds. His message: Don't blame it on the Kosi.
