Flood Control in the Damodar River Valley: An Overview

Floods, a common, natural disaster, are the cause of major devastations in the physical, social and economic fronts besides loss of livestocks and human lives in many regions of the globe. Occurrence, intensity and areal extent of inundation are increasing rather rapidly since the past two to three decades. Regions known to be dry and parched and traditionally not vulnerable to floods are also experiencing unexpected and unusual floods. Now as floods and devastation continue to rise more and more flood plains would be affected and also degraded. For quite some time pressure on lands has also been rising in an unprecedented manner in different parts of the planet due to burgeoning population and for different developmental works. It is widely known that even control of floods also requires large areas of land for the construction of dams, reservoirs, conveyance channels, etc. We need today more and more lands. Cumulative effects of all these over the years have led to encroachment (eg. mostly uncontrolled and unplanned) on various lands namely, open spaces, forests, flood plains, crop fields, etc. These activities in reality have made absorption of flood water (ie, temporary holding, recharge of underground aquifers, unobstruded flow of run-off, etc.) more and more difficult and hence compounding the flood problems.