Former power & finance secretary EAS Sarma cites a series of legal violations and possible environmental damage involved in the Andhra Pradesh project, writes to Union minister Jayanthi Natarajan to reconsider Centre’s go-ahead for the thermal power plant
The East Coast Energy Private Ltd (ECEPL) plant at Kakarapalli village in Srikakulam district of Andhra Pradesh, which recently got the nod from the Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF), has garnered much infamy for several legal violations.
Now, former power and finance secretary EAS Sarma has also written to the Union minister to scrap the project altogether.
Mr Sarma has written to the Union environment & forests minister Jayanthi Natarajan, “I understand that MoEF had recently issued a letter to the private company that they could go ahead with the construction of the project subject to certain conditions. Subsequently, it appears that the Ministry had second thoughts on this and kept that communication in abeyance. Considering the public opposition to the project, I am afraid that any precipitate action on the part of your Ministry would only have serious adverse implications.”
Construction of the first phase will generate a capacity of 1,320MW (megawatts) of the 2,640MW thermal power project and the company will spend some Rs7,000 crore on the first phase. Local residents had protested against the construction, and the ensuing violence left two dead in police firing. Despite a Supreme Court judgement that all public utility lands be returned to the respective gram panchayats after removing existing constructions, ECEPL went ahead with the construction and obtained the clearance afterwards. Moreover, the company has allegedly not surrendered 500 acres of land as promised in lieu of the environmental clearance.
“(The) Ministry of Environment & Forests (MoEF) ought not to have accorded environment clearance for ECEPL’s project at Kakarapalli as the site is situated in a unique wetland system that provides sustenance to thousands of traditional fishermen, small salt farmers and others. The wetland at Kakarapalli is also the nesting ground for more than 120 species of migratory birds. Setting up a project in such a wetland invariably causes flooding of thousands of acres of the adjacent agricultural lands,” he said.
India is a signatory to the Ramsar Convention, which aims at protection of wetlands. In a letter to former Union environment & forests minister Jairam Ramesh, Mr Sarma had pointed out that according to the revenue department of the Andhra Pradesh government, the land allotted for the ECEPL thermal power plant is part of a wetland system and the fact has been corroborated by the state forest & fisheries department and the National Wild Life Board. It now remains to be seen if the Centre acts on Mr Sarma’s recommendation.
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A Thermal power plant means killing of environment or land etc. which belong to next generation. Any of coal mines or crude oil etc. exhaust after some period. Govts, Globally should think of this.
We need Electric power for our living & for the prosperity of the Nation. Leaders should think of simple living & then advice common public on this to live consuming minimum electric power consumption. Think of the wastage of power at every level like transmission, pilferage, unwanted glamorous lighting, and efficient electrical equipments and similar other points. People have to be more educated about using of low power consuming CFL bulbs / using of LED’s where ever possible { In engineering the cost of an item reduces very substantially with increased quantity, improved production techniques which has not realised in practice because of greediness of producers} One among high electric power drawing item is air conditioner should be used if required. Growing of trees has to be made compulsory for every citizen. The list goes on.
But who has to bell the cat