The government is set to hire a consultant for the massive coal power plant in Rampal, close to the Sundarbans, despite environmentalists’ concern about the project’s site selection and its Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) report.
“We have floated a tender to appoint the consultant which is expected to be done by December. By March, we plan to award the power plant building job to an Engineering, Procurement and Construction (EPC) contractor through an open tender,” said an official of the India-Bangladesh joint venture company that is implementing the scheme.
The joint venture company is expected to cover 70 percent of the $ 1.5 billion project cost from loans.
The official claimed that environmentalists and civil society groups were criticising the project EIA without going through its final version.
The Centre for Environment and Geographic Information Services (Cegis) had prepared the report having consulted all including the project’s critics to the Rampal locals, he said, adding that the Department of Environment (DoE) had approved the report early August.
Located 14-kilometre northwest of the Sundarbans and four kilometres from the declared ecologically critical area (ECA), the Rampal site was selected based on recommendations by the Cegis upon an Initial Environmental Examination (IEE) of two sites — Rampal and Labanchhara in Khulna.
Critics say the Cegis prepared the report just to fulfil the government’s wish. They think Labanchhara is a better location as it is situated 33km off the forest.
The Bangladesh Environment Lawyers Association (Bela) earlier this year gave the government a set of concerns that included selection of Rampal as the project site and the poor environmental track record of National Thermal Power Company (NTPC) of India.
Bela said the Indian environment ministry had taken note of NTPC’s extremely poor compliance with environment norms. This was relevant to the selection of a site that is eco-sensitive.
It added even though the site was located 4km from the ecologically critical area of the Sundarbans, there had been insufficient studies on the possible impacts.
“Since NTPC is involved in this project, it is pertinent to note that under India’s EIA Manual on TPP (thermal power plant) the location should be at least 25km from the outermost periphery of the ecologically sensitive areas. Here the site is only 4km away from the Sundarbans,” said Bela.
It appeared to Bela that price of the land had been a major factor for selecting Rampal over Labanchhara where per decimal of land costs between Tk 25,000 and Tk 30,000 compared to Rampal’s Tk 8,000 and Tk 10,000.
In response to Bela’s concerns, the government said the NTPC ranked 337th largest power company in the world according to Forbes and the biggest company in India.
It said the site selection was not motivated only by the land cost. The major indicators were number of settlements to be rehabilitated, population density, cropping area, amount of khas land, maximum allowable draught of the river and cities at downwind direction.
The approved EIA showed that the density of people in Labanchhara was 647 per square-kilometre whereas it was 121 persons per sq-km in Rampal. The net cultivable land in Labanchhara, located just 2km off the Khulna city, was nearly four times more than that of Rampal. Besides, the Passur River in Rampal had three times more draught than that of the river near Labanchhara.
“The final project area is 1,834 acres and it requires evacuation of around 150 homesteads. The Rampal site satisfies all the site selection criteria compared to other sites like Labanchhara,” said the EIA report, adding that in Labanchhara three times more people would need to be evacuated.
“Even if the Rampal plant poses no threat to the Sundarbans, why can’t the government select some other sites in Khulna — far away from the forest — to avoid all these controversies,” a geologist who worked at a coal mine project said.
He said once the power plant was set up, Rampal would be crowded by many industries and that would have an adverse impact on the sensitive ecology.
The government’s priority is to implement the project, not to save the Sundarbans, said Abdul Matin, secretary general of Bangladesh Poribesh Andolon (Bapa).
Source: The Daily Star
