This article was compiled right after the Koshi embankment breach couple of weeks ago. It is published in Katnipuroline this week. I am not sure if the points are still valid as a lot of new information had come out already. Kindly feel free to comment if you have inputs in Koshi Disaster.

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What is Flooding the Koshi Barrage?

For the past couple of days, the news of hundreds of locals at Haripur, Sripur, Laukahi and western Kushaha villages in Sunsari district fleeing their homes after the swollen Saptakoshi River damaged an embankment in western Kushaha village has struck millions of Nepalis living inside and outside Nepal.

Today when the Indian embassy blamed lack of cooperation from Nepal as a reason behind the damaged embankment, it raised many Nepalese eyebrows on what is really going on in the Koshi Barrage.

 More to the point, it also became of prime concern to everyone when the actual extent of the disaster became apparent.

Regarding the damage to the dam itself form news sources, there is enough news about the impact of failure but not on the failure itself. We have tried to brainstorm it among some young water resources "hopefuls" of Nepal abroad to learn what is really happening. The exercise has not yielded a lot of answers, rather more speculations that we would still want to share with our fellow Nepalis in the simplest terms.

 This embankment itself is used to control the flowing path of the river; it can only be eroded in two ways. The erosion of the bottom or base occurs when the velocity of the flow is too high. The situation here appears like the erosion is over the top of embankment. This kind of breach occurs when the collection of water in the barrage basin is too large for the embankment to hold.

 We all know that a barrage has a lot less water storage capacity than a dam. Most of us are aware that the news on the Koshi barrage has said that the bed level of the river upstream of the barrage has been rising in the past. Nepali soil is very loose as the Koshi flows through the middle mountains. It collects a lot of sediment on the way. When the river has no more energy to carry it, especially at the Koshi barrage where the slope of the river is very low, the sediment settles down in the barrage basin. This deposition may have been raising the bed level of the Koshi barrage for many years.

 The barrage has 56 gates. When the gates are fully open, it should be enough to drain all the flow of the barrage in the river. Strangely enough, even now only 40 out of 56 gates are open. As we all know, the Koshi barrage belongs to India and so does the operation of it. The likelihood of the Bihar government (India) opening more gates is slim. They will continue to blame Nepalese local administration for "lack of cooperation" and the story will go on.

 There is also a news report about "stealing some nets". If it's the net that is importance, it is usually from the flow controlling area of the barrage and is almost impossible to steal.

 Whatever the reason may be, if water starts going over the embankment, it starts eroding the embankment from the top. Once this occurs, the size of the bank will reduce exponentially. The situation leads us towards an inevitable major disaster.

It seems like a reduction in the flow of the river is the only hope we have for the time being. In that sense all the Nepalis who are seriously affected, along with those who are directly suffering and losing their lives have no other recourse than to hope for the rain to stop. RS 20 million in relief from the PM looks good. So does a high level visit. But it still does not stop the water flowing out of the barrage. Letâ€^TMs hope that there is a long term approach for a long-term solution. Letâ€^TMs not blame one thing for the incident. Letâ€^TMs prepare ourselves in terms of "Man, Money and Material" and letâ€^TMs pray for the rain to stop.

 (From the excerpts of Sujan Koirala, University of Tokyo, Japan, compiled by Sushil Koirala, WVFT Thailand.)