5th Intl. Dam Safety Conference to be held on Feb.13 & 14 at Bhubaneswar

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New Delhi : The 5^th International Dam Safety Conference–2019 is being held on February 13 & 14, 2019, at Bhubaneswar as a joint initiative of the Government of India (GO), Government of Odisha, and the World Bank under aegis of the ongoing World Bank assisted Dam Rehabilitation and Improvement Project (DRIP) as a part of institutional strengthening.

Dam Safety Conferences are being organised as an annual event in different DRIP States in collaboration with the implementing agencies and leading academic institutes to provide a common platform to all stakeholders including non-DRIP States.

Globally India ranks third after China and the USA in terms of the number of large dams with 5,264 large dams in operation and 437 large dams under construction. The total storage capacity of the impounded water by these dams is about 283 billion cubic meters (BCM). Dams play a vital role in water security and foster rapid and sustained growth in agricultural, rural, urban and industrial development, which have been key priorities for the GOI since independence. Over the last seventy years, India has invested substantially in this critical infrastructure which is essentially required to store and manage limited surface water resources in reservoirs to ensure food, energy, and water security as well as to mitigate droughts and floods.

About 80% of India’s large dams are over twenty-five years old. About 209 dams are over 100 years old and were built in an era when design practices and safety considerations were much below the current design and safety norms. Several of these dams are in need of attention for ensuring their structural safety and operational efficiency.

The Government of India is striving to address the issue of dam safety in a comprehensive way for a quite a long time. In this context, Union Cabinet approved the Dam Safety Bill in June 2018 and this Bill was introduced in Parliament in December 2018. The Preamble of the Bill is to provide surveillance, inspection, operation and maintenance of specified dams for prevention of dam failure related disasters and to provide for institutional mechanism to ensure their safe functioning and for matters connected therewith or incidental thereto.

Considering the success of the ongoing DRIP, Government of India proposed Phase-II and Phase-III of DRIP with a financial outlay of over Rs 10,221 crore to rehabilitate around 700 dams. The GOI has given in-principle approval to this project and very shortly going to pose to World Bank for funding. This project has wide spatial coverage having 18 States and two Central Agencies, and covering about 13% of large dams of India, according to a PIB release.