Nepal’s hydropower rebuild faces a big question: where to build back

Workers shovelled thick mud from a flood-ravaged power station in central Nepal, clearing debris from equipment buried by last week’s catastrophic floods in an effort to restore a key facility supplying electricity to more than 20,000 people.

But as they worked, another question loomed: should the plant simply be rebuilt where it stood, beside the river that destroyed it?

The scale of the destruction has put that question at the heart of Nepal’s recovery. Up to 900 workers from a dozen hydropower projects remain unaccounted for, according to the Independent Power Producers’ Association, Nepal, with hundreds believed to be trapped inside tunnels. Across Nepal and China, more than 900 people have died and 4,700 are missing.

The damage to hydropower infrastructure has taken an estimated 700 megawatts offline — about 10 per cent of Nepal’s installed power capacity. But once the immediate rescue and relief effort is over, disaster experts say authorities will have to grapple with how to restore electricity, roads, bridges, schools and health facilities without rebuilding the vulnerabilities that left them exposed in the first place.

“Authorities have to take a hard look in the mirror now and ask how they will be rebuilding in these places. They will also have to take a close look at other projects in Nepal that have not been built yet, whether they'll be approved after this event,” said Jakob Steiner, a geoscientist at the University of Graz in Austria, who is currently based in Dhaka, Bangladesh.

Hydropower projects that were operational or under construction were fully or partly destroyed across Rasuwa, Nuwakot and Dhading, among the worst-hit districts. Many workers took shelter inside tunnels and remain trapped there, awaiting rescue, officials said.

“The tunnels are built to access hydropower infrastructure and to divert water,” Steiner said, describing them as large enough for trucks to pass through.

The destruction extends far beyond power projects. Tens of kilometres of roads, multiple bridges and essential public buildings, including schools and hospitals, have also been damaged or destroyed. The rebuilding effort, experts say, should focus less on making individual structures indestructible and more on ensuring that essential services can continue when infrastructure fails.

“If it gets damaged, let it get damaged, but can we build in redundancy in the system?” said Ramraj Narasimhan, a senior director at the Coalition for Disaster Resilient Infrastructure.

That could mean choosing safer sites, creating alternative road routes, installing backup power and strengthening early-warning systems. Financial mechanisms such as insurance could also help speed recovery, Narasimhan said. Risk assessments, meanwhile, need to account for river bends, unstable slopes and locations where a single infrastructure failure could cut off several communities.

The Coalition for Disaster Resilient Infrastructure estimates that infrastructure worth $124 billion in Nepal is exposed to climate-driven disasters. A report by the organisation earlier this year estimated the country suffers average annual losses of nearly $760 million from disasters, while its national disaster fund is only a fraction of that amount.

The disaster comes as climate scientists warn that the Himalayan region is particularly vulnerable to the effects of global warming. The Hindu Kush Himalaya is warming rapidly, while accelerating ice loss, permafrost degradation, unstable slopes, glacial lakes and increasingly erratic rainfall are contributing to growing risks from floods, landslides and debris flows, according to research by the Kathmandu-based International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development.

For Nepal, the stakes are particularly high. Hydropower is the backbone of its electricity system and a major driver of economic growth and potential export revenue. Much of the country’s hydropower is run-of-river, Narasimhan said, meaning projects are concentrated along steep river corridors where space is limited and hazards can rapidly cascade from one failure to another.

Some smaller floods can be managed through diversions designed to keep debris and high flows away from expensive infrastructure and tunnels, Steiner said. But defences can be overwhelmed by extreme events of the scale seen last week.

In such circumstances, early warning can become the most important protection — particularly for workers and communities located downstream.

Steiner said the flood was detected at the China-Nepal border after moving rapidly from its source, leaving little warning time upstream. But as the flood travelled downstream towards hydropower projects, there was potentially more time to alert workers, raising questions about whether warnings could have reached them sooner.

The disaster is also likely to intensify scrutiny of future hydropower approvals. Himanshu Thakkar, coordinator of the South Asia Network on Dams, Rivers and People, said environmental, social and disaster-risk assessments must take into account the specific terrain and history of hazards in each valley, backed by stronger land-use rules and accountability.

Large hydropower structures can themselves become “force multipliers”, Thakkar said, when debris, damaged infrastructure and altered river channels compound destruction downstream. Nepal should also consider expanding decentralised solar power as part of a more diversified energy system, he said.

The question facing Nepal, therefore, is not simply how quickly it can restore the power and infrastructure lost in the floods. It is whether it will rebuild what was there — or rethink what belongs in the path of the next one.

With inputs by Victoria Milko and Sibi Arasu/AP