Environment assessments for power plants corrupted?
Business Today has done a detailed investigative study on the existing Environmental Impact Assessment system that approves major projects.
Nellore’s 5,000-crore aquaculture industry, which is providing daily bread to lakhs of people, is in for threat.
Not just the business, as well as the landscape around the area, may get devastated. The reason is the the 1,600 MW Sri Damodaram Sanjeevaiah Thermal Power Station being built by the state-owned Andhra Pradesh Power Generation Corporation (APGENCO).
Trade in coal is to be the new-found wealth of Krishnapatnam. The region has a deepwater port designed to handle imports of coal to feed the 24 thermal power plants which are to come up on a narrow strip of land 20 km long.
The total capacity of all the plants planned is 27,115 MW, or a little over a quarter of India’s current coal-fired power capacity. Each year the plants will need a total of 150 million tonnes, or MT, of coal. Burning this will produce 65 MT of ash, which will be dumped nearby. The air will gain 340 MT of carbon dioxide and 10 MT of sulphur dioxide and nitrogen dioxide, Cerana Foundation, a Hyderabad think tank on energy, environment and development, has estimated.
The plants have completed the formality of getting clearances from the Ministry of Environment and Forests , or MOEF. So, how did the ministry approve projects that may cause an ecological disaster in Krishnapatnam? It did so on the basis of environment impact assessments, or EIAs, submitted by those proposing the projects.
The entire process of preparing EIAs has been corrupted, it is alleged. Again, despite so many power projects coming up at one narrow strip, the government never sought a cumulative assessment of their impact, reports add.
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