An Environmental Mistake in India

If ever there was a lesson in the unintended effects of damming rivers, the Farakka Barrage is probably it. A 4.5-kilometer irrigation dam constructed on a tributary of the River Ganges in 1974-75, it is threatening to wreak havoc on a series of downstream villages and ultimately silt up the Kolkata harbor, the condition it was partly designed to fix.

Th…