The 4,000-mw Bedabahal ultra mega power project (UMPP) in Orissa, which has been held up because of want of environmental clearances, may finally see the light of the day with the power and environment ministries expected to work out a compromise formula by end of this week. The ministry of environment and forests (MoEF) may give the project the go-ahead but with riders.
?We are trying to be accommodating but the area (captive coal mine blocks) has 250 hectare of forest land having medium to high density forests. We have asked the power ministry to reduce the size of the project but they are not agreeing to do it,? said an MoEF official.
?We have not closed the doors to the project but both parties need to be flexible. We have to save atleast 200 hectare of the 240 hectare of forest land,? the official added.
It is expected that under a compromise formula to be finalised by MoEF and the power ministry, the boundaries of the captive coal blocks attached with the UMPP will be redrawn to take thickly forested areas outside the mining zone. In the areas where coal mining will be permitted, companies may be allowed to extract deep seated coal reserves using modern technologies. This can maintain output from mines at planned levels without causing large scale damange to the forest cover. In fact, the the Planning Commission had constituted a Working Group on coal and lignite for recommending measures for alternative technologies for extraction of resources in geologically disturbed areas and deep seated coal resources.
Moreover, the draft new Mines and Minerals (Development and Regulation) Bill, 2010 also talks about encouraging good mining practices, which will also lead to technology absorption and exploitation of deep seated minerals.
?While there is also proposal to scale down the size of UMPP to a level that could use depleted coal output from captive mines after its bundaries are redrawn, it will dilute the objective with which these ultra projects were launched,? said a power ministry official.
MoEF, meanwhile, is skeptical in giving the clearances to captive mines of Orissa UMPP because there are two more projects in the vicinity including one being developed by NTPC awaiting green nod. The clearance for the captive mining project of the UMPP will be a shot in the arm for the power ministry that has failed to take up any ultra project for more than a year.
The bidding process, which started in June last year, has already been postponed four times with the last extension for submitting request for qualification (RFQ) document ending on January 31.