Indian Hydroelectric Dam
Large dam projects in India have been getting a lot of attention recently, for their environmental and social impacts as well as their relation to India’s growing economy and need for more and more electricity. The state of Maharashtra, where I am living, has many of these dams. The dam we visited, on the Pench River north of Nagpur, was completed in 1989 and provides power to Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh, as well as supplying water to the city of Nagpur. When the dam was filled 7700 hectares and seven villages were flooded. We got the opportunity to go inside the dam, into the tunnels that the inspectors use when they inspect the dam. What I saw there did not inspire confidence. The area around the dam and lake is now a tiger preserve, although we didn’t see a tiger on our visit.
