Nellore power project: Activists cry foul

Accuse AP Genco of manipulating EIA for expansion of Sri Damodaram Sanjeevaiah Thermal Power Station at Nelaturu in Muthukuru mandal

Hyderabad: The AP Genco is allegedly trying to manipulate all laws of the land to push through the expansion project of the Sri Damodaram Sanjeevaiah Thermal Power Station at Nelaturu, Muthukuru mandal of Nellore district. It is one of the coal-based power plants of Andhra Pradesh Power Development Company Limited.

A public hearing for the expansion is being held on September 18, but many are raising objection over the speed with which the project is being pushed through ignoring several environmental issues. The installed capacity of two units is of 800 MW each and another 800 MW is being added. M/s Vimta Labs Limited, Hyderabad, prepared the EIA (Environment Impact Assessment) for the proposed expansion. But Raithu Sanghala Samakhya, led by its president Ch Venugopala Rao, has raised objections and wrote to both APPCB (Andhra Pradesh Pollution Control Board) and the project proponent.

Rao and several environmental activists alleged that the EIA report had failed to include a cumulative environment impact assessment taking into account the various other power projects and industrial units already set up, being set up and planned to be set up in the vicinity in the immediate future. As such, the report is highly misleading.

They reminded that the Centre for Environment Science prepared a report on mercury poisoning of the people residing in the vicinity of a similar thermal power plant near Singrauli, Madhya Pradesh. Any responsible project proponent or an environment consultant would be sensitive enough to consider and appreciate such findings and address the concern in the EIA report. The absence of any reference to it is indicative of the callousness of the project authorities towards the welfare of the people, they said. The National Green Tribunal has directed that all future EIA studies should consider the presence of radioactive isotopes in fly ash and assess its impact on people’s health. Clearly, the EIA report has failed to comply with this direction. The report titled Comprehensive Environmental Impact Assessment has collected data over eight months (two seasons) only and not over full year to qualify as Comprehensive EIA. What is more relevant here is cumulative impact assessment from a cluster of power plants in the area.

Several coal-based power plants are under construction and several more obtained environmental clearance in the Krishnapatnam area. Environmental impact should be based on the cumulative effect of emissions and discharges from all these plants. But the EIA report does not include even the emissions from the 1,600 MW stage I plant of the same project in predicting incremental ground level concentration (GLCs) for various pollutants.