The Hindu : Kerala News : Plea to implement Pathrakadavu hydel project

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Sunday, Jun 06, 2004

Kerala

Kerala

Plea to implement Pathrakadavu hydel project

By Our Special Correspondent

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM, JUNE 5. The KSEB Officers' Association (KSEBOA) has asked the State Government to implement the proposed Pathrakadavu hydel scheme after taking all precautions to conserve the ecological wealth of the Silent Valley National Park.

In a statement here today, the association said the Government should address the issue of this hydel scheme objectively, without being influenced by arguments of those who had taken extreme positions on either conservation or development. Ecological concerns and development concerns should be judiciously balanced to serve the interests of the State and its people.

The KSEBOA had set up a committee to go into various aspects of the Pathrakadavu project, prepared by the KSEB, following the controversies it had generated in the recent weeks. Besides the office-bearers of the association, the committee consisted top civil and electrical engineers, who had obtained expert training in China and Canada. It also consisted leading activists of the Kerala Sastra Sahithya Parishat, the statement said.

This committee visited the site of the project on May 27. The dam site was four to five km away from the place where the powerhouse and switchyard were to be located. The dam was to be built 373 m above the level of the powerhouse. The committee also inspected the area, upstream of the proposed dam, which would be inundated when the project was implemented and also the stretch along which a road would have to be built. It was a three-hour climb to reach the dam site. The climb was along a footpath over the shoulders of steep hills that were, in most parts, devoid of tree cover, the association said.

The committee then went through the project report, the environmental impact assessment report and the arguments put forward by those who opposed the project and supported it.

Those who opposed the project had put forward the following points: 1. Once the project was implemented, there would be a drastic drop in rainfall in Silent Valley region. Human intervention in these virgin forests would have devastating effects. 2. The river Kunthipuzha (across which the project was proposed) would dry up completely along the stretch from the dam site to the place where the powerhouse was to be located, resulting in the destruction of the aqua-flora of the area. 3. The 220 kv transmission lines that would have to be drawn for evacuating the power generated by the project would be passing through the panchayats of Alanellur and Kumaramputhur. It would stretch along a distance of 18 km across rubber growing areas. Rubber trees would have to be removed along this stretch and the people of the two panchayats would be put to difficulties.

The KSEBOA committee felt that the first argument was totally baseless. The area required for the project came to 22 hectares and this was not within the Silent Valley National Park. Further, the project did not envisage a reservoir across Kunthipuzha. It was basically a `run of the river' project and the structure to be built was only a `check dam' to regulate the flow of the river and divert it to the proposed powerhouse.

The area upstream and downstream of the proposed dam was a narrow and deep V-shaped ravine. The height of the proposed dam was 64.5 m and the length, 275 m. An area of only four hectares would be inundated when the dam was built. A major part of these four hectares had big boulders abutting Kunthipuzha. At least one hectare of the water spread of the reservoir would be over the existing course of the river. The rest of the area that would be inundated was sparsely wooded, the KSEBOA said.

The argument that Kunthipuzha would dry up along the stretch from the dam site to the place where the powerhouse was to be located too was incorrect, according to the KSEBOA committee. Two perennial streams, Neelikkallu and Valayampotty, joined Kunthipuzha just below Pathrakadavu. These streams would ensure continuous flow from Pathrakkadavu to the point where the powerhouse was proposed to be located, even if the dam blocked the flow down Kunthipuzha. Therefore, the aqua-flora along the stretch would not be destroyed, the statement said.

The expectation was that there would be an average annual inflow of 498 million cubic metres of water to Pathrakkadavu. As much as 48 per cent of this water would overflow the proposed `check dam' into Kunthipuzha itself. The rest of the water, which would come to around 258 million cubic metres, could be utilised to run two generators of 35 MW each to provide around 214 million units of electricity. The tail flow from the generators would once again reach Kunthipuzha. These projections were based on rainfall and inflow data collected by the Forest Department, according to the KSEBOA statement.

The committee felt that the existing proposal to draw 220 kv lines from the switchyard of the proposed project over a stretch of 18 km along the panchayats of Alanellur and Kumaramputhur should be reconsidered by the KSEB. A better option was to have a 110 kv double circuit line from the proposed switchyard to the existing 110 kv sub station at Mannarkkad. The distance involved was seven km. From Mannarkkad to Vennakkara in Palakkad, there was already a single circuit 110 kv line. This line could be converted to double circuit. This change in the proposal would bring two advantages. One, the total cost of the transmission lines to evacuate power from the Pathrakkadavu project would be lower and two, this power could be utilised to overcome the problem of low voltage currently being experienced in Mannarkkad, Malampuzha and Palakkad areas. It would also reduce transmission loss.

According to the KSEBOA committee, much of the ongoing controversy about the project was due to the tendency of certain sections to react emotionally to the subject without studying the details of the project. The KSEB was now having no major hydel or thermal power project proposal. By 2007, in addition to the power that might be additionally available from Central power stations, Kerala would have to build up installed capacity for the generation of at least 450 MW to meet the demands of the customers here. This was the significance of the Pathrakkadavu project, the statement said.

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