John Reynolds Paper

[Seth Sicroff]

If you do not receive the attached paper, or cannot open it, you will be able to access it at www.econf.org within four or five hours.
Seth Sicroff

[Janice Sacherer]

Seth-
Thank you for posting this paper where it is easily accessible to the
others. I do wish I had seen it before jotting off my small
contribution. I realized from his paper for example, that I made an
error in saying that the glof in the early 1990's came from Trakarding
glacier when in fact, as Reynolds reminds us, it came from Ripimo Shar.

One point of his I would like to reiterate is that glacial lake
remediation should be part of an integrated rural development plan. One
example of this concerns electricity in the valley, the greatest
expressed need of the local people. A small micro hydel plant was
installed on the outflow of Tsho Rolpa, for the benefit of the
monitoring staff only, with no measurement of whether there was excess
capacity and no thought to whether this could be extended to the local
people in any way. Not surprising then that they currently assume that
if the large Rolwaling Chu hydro project designed for the Simigaon
waterfall is built, they will receive none of the benefits, or as one
Rolwalingite put it, "that electricity will go to India before it comes
to us". Hopefully, the new government being constituted in Kathmandu,
will be somewhat more responsive to local needs, especially if outside
observers pressure them to do so!