Kathmandu, Sept. 6 -- The August 26 catastrophic floods in the Bhotekoshi region caused loss of life and property at a scale the country is still finding hard to fathom. With the assessment of damage and rescue and relief operations underway, the cascading disaster has posed a hard question: What is Nepal doing about the rest of its mountains?

The answer, at present, is a roughly $50 million project to lower the water level of four glacial lakes in the Koshi and Gandaki basins. But scientists who have studied those lakes say the work, as currently conceived, will not make the downstream settlements safe.

The four lakes-Lumding Tsho and Hongu-2 in Solukhumbu, Lower Barun in Sankhuwasabha and Thulagi (Dona) in Manang-were identified as hi...