Posted on February 25, 2026
By Saurav Anand
For nearly five decades, hydropower reservoirs across Jammu and Kashmir have been quietly losing capacity to silt — shrinking storage, eroding turbine efficiency and driving up maintenance costs — while treaty-linked restrictions blocked even basic sediment management.
That logjam is now breaking. With the suspension of key operational provisions under the Indus Waters Treaty, India has begun its first large-scale hydropower optimisation drive in the region, unlocking long-stalled desilting works, revival of sediment evacuation systems and scientific water reservoir restoration.
The shift will significantly cut losses and stabilise ageing hydel infrastructure in the region, officials say. The Salal Power Station on the Chenab river has become the first major test case of the post-suspension reset.
Internal technical assessments show the extent of deterioration: the reservoir’s original capacity of 284 million cubic metres has collapsed to just 9 million cubic metres in May 2025 after decades of unchecked sediment accumulation.
The damage was structural by design constraint — under-sluices and silt excluder gates built to flush sediment downstream were permanently plugged under agreements linked to the treaty in 1960 and 1978.
“Earlier, the silt kept building up, turbines kept taking abrasion damage and efficiency kept bleeding — with no legal window to intervene,” a senior official familiar with the operations said.
Govt directs hydropower operators to prioritise reservoir revival
Following the suspension, the government directed hydropower operators to prioritise reservoir revival and operational optimisation, moving quickly to reclaim lost capacity and reduce mechanical stress.
At Salal, large-scale mechanical dredging is already underway after a no-objection certificate was issued to Reach Dredging Limited of Kolkata in August 2025, with work commencing in November.
The contractor has secured clearance to dispose of 1 lakh metric tonnes of silt, of which over 1.77 lakh metric tonnes have already been dredged and nearly 68,500 metric tonnes disposed, according to project updates. Due to this process, the reservoir water capacity has regain from around 10 million cubic metres to 14 million cubic metres as of the date.
A second dredging contract
A second dredging contract has also been cleared for Dharti Dredging & Infrastructure Limited of Mumbai, with final approvals in progress before operations begin.
More importantly, tenders have now been floated to revive the permanently plugged under-sluices — the core sediment evacuation mechanism that experts say offers the only long-term solution to reservoir choking.
Bids close later this month. “Dredging is damage control. Under-sluices are the cure,” an official said on condition of anonymity. “Once sediment evacuation is restored, the reservoir can manage itself again.”
Alongside this, the NHPC is exploring and study scientifically evaluate dredging, flushing and under-sluice operations to design a permanent sediment management framework for the project.The operational push is driven by years of silent efficiency loss.
“Silt is highly abrasive. It wears down runners, gates and submerged parts continuously. That means lower efficiency, more breakdowns and higher costs,” another official said.
The desilting exercise is also opening up a commercial opportunity. Officials said the dredged sediment — known as washed sand is of high construction-grade quality and the dredging contractor is already in talks with the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI), NBCC, Indian Railways and other infrastructure agencies for its use in highways, bridges and large civil projects.
“Instead of dumping it, this material can directly feed into national infrastructure works,” an official said.
The optimisation at Salal has wider regional implications. Power from the station is shared among nine states and Union Territories, with Jammu & Kashmir receiving 34.39%, followed by Punjab at 26.60%, Haryana at 15.02% and Delhi at 11.62%, besides allocations to Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh and Chandigarh.
Officials said similar sediment recovery and efficiency programmes are now being prepared for other hydropower stations across the Chenab basin.
“What we are seeing is the first tangible operational impact of the treaty suspension,” an official said. “It’s about protecting assets that were slowly suffocating for decades.”
After years of silent erosion, India’s hydropower reservoirs in Jammu and Kashmir are finally beginning a long-overdue operational reset — not by building new dams, but by clearing what had quietly drained their performance.
