Academic literature on the topic 'Damodar Valley Corporation'

Damodar River basin is one of the most important river basins in India. The rich natural resource base of the basin in terms of coal, minerals, forests and fertile agricultural lands have supported livelihood of millions of people over centuries. The Damodar basin morphology character causes frequent flooding in the lower catchment during monsoon. Over the centuries this natural disaster severely affects the life and property of the lower catchment. Presence of coal and minerals initiated mining and industrialisation in the basin since last 150 years. Damodar Valley Corporation was formed in 1948 to manage water resources and sustainable development of the basin. But DVC at present became a large power corporate with little role for basin management. The fast unplanned economic development with rapid urbanisation is damaging the Damodar River ecosystem. This in turn affects the life and livelihood of large number of people in the basin. A new basin management strategy needs to be adopted in the present situation to save the river and the people of the basin area from the imminent environmental disasters. JEL Classification: Q56

In the Lower Gangetic Plain of West Bengal, the furious monsoon flood of Damodar River is a recurrent hydrometeorological phenomenon which is now intensified by the human activities. At present, the flood regulation system of Damodar Valley Corporation (DVC) is not capable of managing gigantic inflow water (which appeared as surface runoff and channel flow) coming from the wide fan-shaped upper catchment of Damodar River. As a result, the lower basin of Damodar (covering Barddhaman, Hooghly, and Howrah districts of West Bengal) annually experiences low to high magnitude of floods and overflow condition because the existing canal system, streams, palaeochannels, and Damodar River itself have lost their former carrying capacity to accommodate all excess water within its active domain due to over siltation and drainage congestion. So when the DVC dams are not able to regulate flood flow, then extreme rainfall of prolonged duration over the basin turns the normal situation into devastating flood, like the years of 1978 and 2000 in West Bengal. Identifying the existing problems of lower Damodar River, this paper principally tries to assess the potentiality of flood climate and to estimate the contributing rainfall-runoff, peak discharge, and existing carrying capacity of river in relation to increasing flood risk of lower basin using the quantitative hydrologic expressions.

This paper aims to assess the weather risk exposure of Indian power sector from both generation and demand sides. The study considers two representative firms – firstly, Damodar Valley Corporation (DVC), a hydro-generator, to assess its rainfall exposure, and secondly, Calcutta Electric Supply Corporation (CESC), a retail power supplier, to assess the temperature sensitivity of power demand. The study opts for ‘Value at Risk’ approach, which combines both the sensitivity of power variables towards weather variable and the probability of weather change. The sensitivity is measured using regression analysis with autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL). Parametric distributions are fitted to weather data to assess probabilities. Due to the ‘fat-tail’ characteristic of the fitted distribution, a ‘conditional value-at-risk’ model is considered more effective. The study reveals that the hydroelectricity generation is highly exposed to monsoon rainfall fluctuation and hence the hydro-generator may experience substantial loss of revenue due to insufficient monsoon, whereas the revenue of retail power distributor is moderately exposed to fluctuation of daily surface temperature.

A geomorphological instantaneous unit hydrograph (GIUH) model was developed for a watershed of Damodar valley corporation, Hazaribagh, using Nash (1959) and Itrube (1982) methods to compute peak discharge (qpeak) and time to peak (tpeak). The model was calibrated and validated for five storm events, i.e. June 24-25 (1992), October 12-13 (1993), November 2-3 (1993), June 28 (1994) and August 6 (1996) by comparing their ordinates with the ordinates of instantaneous unit hydrograph (IUH). The GIUH was tested with absolute prediction errors (APE) of the ordinate of peak discharge. On comparison, it was found that, most of the GIUH models overestimated the runoff at initial stage, while underestimated at the latter stage in comparison to the IUHs, which was mainly due to consideration of const ant value of Ф-index, for computation of effective rainfall. The absolute prediction errors (APE) were computed to be 5.97, 18.09, 23.32, 9.64 and 7.52% of the ordinates of peak discharge for the storm events of June 24-25 (1992), October 12-13 (1993), November 2-3 (1993), June 28 (1994) and August 6 (1996) respectively.

A water supply canal having a length of 8.9 km, originating from Durgapur Barrage at Durgapur, West Bengal, India and terminating in a pool at a downstream distance of 8.9 km was constructed by Damodar Valley Corporation during 1957-60 to supply drinking water to the city of Durgapur, West Bengal, India and water to several industries situated at Durgapur. Durgapur Municipal Corporation withdraws its complete demand from this canal of DVC. The major industries withdrawing water from the canal is M/S Durgapur Chemical Limited, M/S Durgapur Steel Plant, M/S Phillips Carbon, M/S Durgapur Thermal Power Station. Though the canal was designed for original capacity of 900 cusecs, but now there is withdrawal of about 400 cusecs only from the canal due collapse of the cross section of the earthen canal at different chainage, silting of the canal throughout its reach resulting in failure of the function of the canal to supply water to major customers. A study was undertaken to assess the present hydraulic and environmental conditions of the existing canal and propose procedure for revival of the canal in the most economic way without disrupting the present withdrawal from the canal and also suggest measures to be undertaken for maintenance of environment along the canal to prevent canal cross section from unlawful ingress of water into the canal. In this study, present hydraulic conditions of the canal have been analyzed. Different alternatives of reviving the canal to carry a discharge of 500 cusecs were attempted by (i) designing pre-cast section of the canal capable of carrying a discharge more than 500 cusec, (ii) simply using the existing cross section with side protection with steel sheet piling and bottom protection with concrete blocks, and (iii) providing diaphragm wall on each side of the section and bottom protection with concrete blocks. Feasibility of construction under conditions of continued supply to the existing stake holders was considered while analyzing the economics of revival for all the three alternatives. Revival of the canal by option (ii) has been recommended on the basis of economics of revival amid running condition of the canal. Though the working life of the canal with sheet pile protected side wall is less than that of the canal with diaphragm wall as the side wall of the cross section but workability under running condition of the canal is much higher for the case of side protection with steel sheet piles. Measures such as diverting the unlawful ingress away from the canal, protecting the side berms with green cover has been recommended to improve the environment around the canal.

Jharkhand was carved out of Bihar, and at the time of separation received an endowment of cheap power, sources of cheap natural resources (e.g. coal), and a large industrial customer base. However, the power sector has been treated as a source of rents through contracts rather than a source of political support, with successive unstable and short term governments following an extractive rather than developmental approach. Moreover, the industrial customer base was tied to private utilities and the Damodar Valley Corporation (a Government of Indian undertaking) and therefore was not available as a source of cross-subsidy. The net effect is that Jharkhand has been trapped in a low level equilibrium of low access and low political demand for access.