Himalayan Earthquakes, High Dams and the Seismo- Story

of the Tehri Hydro-Project, India

In the Himalaya if low magnitude earthquakes are taken along with the felt
events, then there have been countless earthquakes that visited one or other
parts of the Himalaya till date. The people of India in general and the
earthscientist community in particular are aware of the seismic hazard status of
the Himalaya including the fact that 4 major earthquakes [1897- Shillong, 1905-
Kangra, 1934- Bihar/Nepal and 1950- Assam (Indo-China border)] have struck
within a short span of about 50 years. These earthquakes are caused due to
constant push of the Indian continent towards the Asian landmass and such
major earthquakes of magnitude 7.0 — 8.0+ are likely to hit Himalaya any time.
The uncertainty in this type of open-ended prediction or forecasting is that it is
not known when and in which section of the Himalaya this earthquake will strike.
As occurrence of an earthquake cannot be prevented nor it can be predicted with
precise space, time and size window, the alternative is that the society gets
prepared to live with such earthquakes. Seismic hazard mitigation and
preparedness strategies are thus adopted for all seismically hazardous regions of
the world. Anti-seismic design is incorporated in the structures to withstand
lateral and vertical forces generated due to earthquakes. Depending on the
importance of the structures different levels of studies are recommended to arrive
at the desired design parameters. This is true for all structures starting from
ordinary residential building to Nuclear Power Plant including all other heavy
engineered structures such as high dams.

High dams (> l00m) are constructed world over even in seismically active areas
and India is no exception. The Bhakra dam (226m) in Himachal Pradesh across
river Sutlej was constructed in 1962. Reservoir filling in the Pong (123m) and
Pondh (116m) dams across Beas was completed in 1978. Reservoir filling in the
Kalagarh dam (125m) across Ramganga River commenced in 1974 and the
Thein dam (148m) across Beas in the Gurdaspur district of Panjab has recently
been completed though reservoir filling started from 1999. The Tarbela dam
(143m) across Indus and Mangla dam (118m) across Jhelum, both in Pakistan
were completed in the late sixties. All these dams are rock-fill or concrete gravity
dams and are designed (based on existing concepts and available technologies)
to withstand both lateral and vertical forces that may result from strong
earthquake shaking. Apart from those mentioned, a number of high dams across
Himalayan Rivers are in various stages of planning and some under construction
including the Tehri dam (261m) across Bhagirathi. One of the remarkable thing is
that these high dams with huge reservoirs (e.g., Bhakra: 9868 million m3 Tehri:
3539 million m3) have not produced any reservoir induced (or triggered)
seismicity and unlike the Koyna reservoir, Himalayan reservoirs has actually
reduced the rate of background seismicity in the post-impoundment period.

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During the late eighties and early nineties several environmentalist groups
started objected to construction of such large dams, initially on environmental
and human re-settlement grounds but slowly it took various turns including
concerns over issues on seismic hazard. As construction work was in progress
for the Tehri dam, it became the target for criticism both from within and outside
the country. The allegation is that the Tehri dam has not been properly designed
and hence it will topple in the event of a major earthquake, which may strike any
day and whose source could be close to the dam. If the Tehri dam, which is
being designed in the nineties with latest technologies can get structurally
damaged in a large earthquake what will be the fate of the existing high dams
that were designed about 20-30 years back? Surprisingly neither the scientists
nor the media appears to be concerned on this aspect. The interest appears to
be centered only on the Tehri dam!

Since 1990 Government of India (GOI) has taken a number of steps/actions to

ensure safer seismic design of the Tehri dam; these include:

1. In 1990 GOI (MOM) constituted a 5 member High Level Committee (HLC)

with Director General, GSI as the Chairman to go into the details of all
aspects pertaining to the safety of the Tehri dam. The Committee
submitted a unanimous report wherein the HCL opined that the dam as
designed would be safe under worst possible seismic scenario on the
basis of a set of well reasoned arguments and scientific assumptions.

2. Subsequently one of the members of HLC (hereafter referred as ‘A’) put

forward the views of Prof James N. Brune (USA) who had some
reservations on the value of attenuation factor (Q) and Peak Ground
Acceleration (PGA) considered by HCL and a re-consideration on seismic
design parameters was solicited. GOI accepted the suggestion and
revived the HLC to examine the views of Prof Brune and ‘A’.

3. After another round of in-depth study the HLC submitted a supplementary

report which states that the conclusions and recommendations embodied
in the original report do not require any further modifications. ‘A’ however
did not agree and submitted a dissenting note.

4. The original HLC report, the supplementary report, comments of ‘A’ and
Prof. Brune was referred to Prof. Jai Krishna an eminent Engineering
seismologist. Prof Jai Krishna in his report of September 1990 opined that
sufficient conservation has adopted by the HLC in estimating the basic
seismic parameters and compared the same with those adopted for dam
designing. Prof. Jai Krishna was of the view that since the estimates and
the parameters were very close, and the darn design has already been
tested for a range of PGAs, the same is quite safe.

5. The MOM accepted the recommendation of Prof. Jai Krishna but then also
suggested that the design of the Tehri dam be tested against the Gazle

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 earthquake (1976; USSR) which recorded an acceleration higher than
1.0g. Thus the dam section got checked at Hydro Project Institute,
Moscow in 1991 with the actual accelerogram of the Gazle earthquake.
The test established that the Tehri dam as designed would withstand any
earthquake with vertical acceleration up to 1.36g and horizontal
acceleration of 0.72g.

The apparent controversy could have and should have ended there but it was not
to be. At this juncture in 1991 the Indian National Trust for Arts and Cultural
Heritage (INTACH) approached GOI (MOM) along with the notes of Prof. Brune,
V. Kelis-Borok and ‘A’ to further review the case. Simultaneously various articles
started being published in the media giving an impression that GOI is doing
nothing and allowing the Tehri dam to come up which is destined for a
disaster due to an earthquake. Intensive and extensive formal and informal
discussion meeting went on and a number of scientific projects were taken up as
suggested by the experts to study various aspects of seismology that could
generate additional input data for the design of the dam. Since 1994-95 a
number of scientific papers followed by media reports are published in national
and international forum on the possibility of an impending large Himalayan
earthquake and in every case reference is drawn towards the vulnerability of the
Tehri dam.

In one such article entitled Big Crunch Looms for Northern India published in
the Journal New Scientist, December, 1994, No l956, Bob Holmes quoting Indian
and foreign scientists writes These results present a serious problem for the
Indian Government, which has just begun work on the 260m high Tehri
dam in the mountain north of Delhi, squarely in the region at greatest risk
of a major earthquake. Current plan for the dam do not include safely
measures that would ensure it withstand a quake of this size (8.0+). Further
the correspondent writes The Indian Government has down played these
warnings, but new data may convince it to take them more seriously. A
theoretical result can be tossed out the back door by a politician but a real
result can’t be refuted so easily.

The Tehri controversy went on. More expert committees were constituted by
GOI, this time by the Ministry of Power and in 1996 at the instance of Sundar Lal
Bahuguna another expert committee was constituted involving eminent Indian
scientists. This committee submitted its report in 1998. In the same year a
number of PIL was submitted in the Supreme Court to review the decision on the
construction of Tehri dam in general and the issue of seismic design in particular.
A special meeting of the National Committee on Seismic Design Parameters
(NCSDP) was convened by CWC to study the recommendations of the expert
committee constituted by the Ministry of Power. The design parameters
recommended and further work suggested was accepted unanimously except the
study on the simulated dam break analysis. In the mean time about 90% work on
the construction of the Tehri dam is complete when the Bhuj earthquake of

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January 2001 came. Some people again flexed their mussels so another expert
committee has been constituted by the Ministry of Power to review the seismic
design of the Tehri dam in the light of Bhuj earthquake. The story goes on!

Let us examine the points related to seismic design parameters that have
generated so much of controversy among the scientists and where they differ.
There is not much difference of opinion in assuming the worst possible scenario
of an earthquake of magnitude 8.0+ triggering from a depth of 15 Km below,
within the life time of the dam. The other assumption like the extension of the
rupture zone over a length of 200-300 Km with a width of 100 Km and average
slip of 6-12m and acceleration on the plane of rupture to be 2g have been
agreed, in general, by all concerned scientists. Whether the earthquake will occur
to fill the seismic gap or it is related to the detachment fault etc are subject of
research and this will not affect the design parameters. The bone of contention
is on the two values where the experts differ to give rise to the never ending
Tehri controversy.

The HLC assumed the attenuation factor Q as 50 for estimating the PGA; while
some opined it to be too low, Prof Brune argues that it could be as high as 500.
The HLC calculated the PGA to be 0.446g and the effective peak acceleration
(EPA, used for design purpose) as 0.22g (50% of PGA). Indian and foreign
experts [including Prof Brune] opposed these values and opined that the PGA
would be of the order of 1.0g and therefore EPA should be much higher. HLC
has elaborately studied these two parameters and concluded that available data
do not call for changing the values of PGA and EPA for design purpose.

Now, how to ascertain which value of Q, 50 or 500 should be considered correct

or more appropriate for the Himalayan region? What is our state of knowledge on
the Q value? Hashizume (PEPI, 1979) states Q values obtained from these
studies are very scattered and thus difficult to answer simple questions such as-
what is the order of magnitude of Q for the crust as a whole. Or which Q is larger,
that of the upper crust or the lower crust? The scatter seem to be primarily due to
the assumption made for example, about the crustal structure, the transmission
mechanism of seismic waves or the source function, and to poor resolving power
in the interpretation, rather than to regional variation of an elasticity of the crust.
To obtain more confident values of Q, it is desirable that assumptions involved in
the algorithm are simple and the interpretation is as straight forward as possible.
In another paper Tonn (PEPI, 1989) lists 7 different ways of measurement of the
Q values with conflicting statements as Q should be constant, independent of
frequency or proportional to certain power of frequency close to unity; Q for wet
rocks is frequency dependent whereas for dry rock it is frequency independent
etc. All these apparent conflicting conclusions arise from the manner in which Q
is estimated. Thus there is no unique answer to the question whether Q would be
50 or 500 or some other value. Moreover, the quality factor Q has various
connotations like Qc, Qp, Qs, effective Q etc. Each of the parameters and their
values are different and not interchangeable. Using different Q values by different

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experts has resulted confusion. What is relevant for design purpose is Q for S-
wave (Qs), which is about half the value of Qp in general. The entire problem of
fixing the Q-value boils down to the fact that unless the crustal structure below
the Himalaya is known in sufficient details there can be no consensus on the
value of Q. Tricky choices of velocity model and corresponding Q values can give
synthetic PGA that are often difficult to refute. However, regarding PGA it may be
stated that acceleration of over 1.0g in near-field is not impossible. However
there is little evidence to consider PGA of over 0.5g at a distance of 15Km from
the focus, unless there is some unusual geological situation resulting site
amplification for which there is no evidence from the Tehri site. It may be noted
that PGA for the 1991 Uttarkashi earthquake derived from strong motion
recordings gave a value of 0.304g at the epicenter.

The Tehri dam has (finally) been designed to withstand horizontal acceleration of
1.09g and a vertical acceleration of 0.89g for a predicted MCE of 8.5 located just
below the dam!

Sujit Dasgupta
August, 2001