-PTI Till September 2011, only eight States have prepared EAP for 192 large dams Even as the Uttarakhand floods bring to the fore the debate over strength of dams, there are over 4,500 such structures in the country which are operating without an "emergency action plan" (EAP) rendering huge area and property vulnerable to cascading effects of dam failure. The Central Water Commission (CWC), which works under the Water Resources Ministry, had issued...

-Governance Now A CAG report dated March 15, 2013 had found Uttarakhand sitting on a time bomb, with nearly zero disaster preparedness back in Sept 2012 when the nationwide performance audit was done. Will other states, marked equally poorly in the audit, sit up and smell the coffee? The massive disaster in Uttarakhand has brought to the fore not only the old debate of ecology versus development but also thrown up...

-Timescrest.com Three successive CAG reports warned the Uttarakhand govt about the consequences of multiple hydropower projects, and their unpreparedness in the face of disaster. The advice was ignored. With aim of turning Uttarakhand into Urja Pradesh, the state has committed to building 680 dams, currently in various stages of commissioning, construction and planning. The powers that be have expedited the clearances for these projects. However, when it came to the issue of credible...

-PTI GUWAHATI: Flood situation in Assam worsened on Sunday with 43 more villages in three districts getting submerged, while water entered the Kaziranga National Park where an antelope was killed, officials said. About 65,000 people of 170 villages in seven districts - Dhemaji, Tinsukia, Golaghat, Jorhat, Kamrup, Karimganj and Lakhimpur - were affected. However, there was no report of any casualty. According to Assam State Disaster Management Authority (ASDMA), Brahmaputra and its...

-IANS NEW DELHI: While thousands have suffered the fury of floods in Uttarakhand, experts say worse tragedies may strike the region unless the rampant violation of the Himalayan state's sensitive ecology is checked. Environmentalists blamed the volume of the disaster on the dams, indiscriminate construction, uncontrolled tourism and ignorance about the fragile ecology of the area. Experts have called for an immediate halt to unchecked tourism, especially religious tourism, and haphazard construction. "The...