The Hindu : National : `Review on-going hydel projects'

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Wednesday, Aug 04, 2004

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National

`Review on-going hydel projects'

By Our Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI, AUG. 3. The accident at the Tehri Hydroelectric Project at Uttaranchal has led to fresh demands by environmentalists and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) to stop the filling up of the dam's reservoir and a review of all the on-going hydel projects in the Himalayan region.

In a press release, they said this was the second such incident at Tehri in three years after 60 workers were buried alive during a landslip in 2001.

They also questioned the functioning of the committee constituted by the Supreme Court to monitor rehabilitation and environmental compliance.

The monitoring committee, during its visit in March 2004, had reportedly given a clean chit to the Tehri Hydro Development Corporation (THDC) and other agencies by saying that "the THDC and the State Government have made all necessary arrangements for the closure of the tunnels."

The NGOs alleged that the project authorities had ignored several warnings on the impact of glacial lakes and artificial lakes formed in several snow-fed Himalayan rivers.

They said that in the past 72 hours, the Nathpa-Jhakri hydel power station in Himachal Pradesh had to be repeatedly shut down due to a flood scare precipitated by the bursting of a temporary lake upstream of the Sutlej on the Chinese side of the border. Nathpa-Jhakri boasts of the largest and longest headrace tunnel, the largest de-silting chambers, the deepest and largest surge shaft and the largest underground power complex. In 1998 and 2000, several workers had died during the construction of this project.

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