Amid the controversy over heritage status being given to 39 sites in the Western Ghats, three of the six affected states have partly accepted the recommendations of the Madhav Gadgil report and even offered alternatives. While Goa, Gujarat and Maharashtra have not rejected the recommendations completely and given alternative solutions pertaining to hydel projects, Tamil Nadu and Kerala have sought more time to give their recommendations. On the other hand, Karnataka has not given its feedback to the ministry of environment and forests (MoEF).
?The report is robust and scientific and needs to be accepted, otherwise the states will not be able to implement it. In fact, the states are not negative about the report and have suggested alternatives,? said a senior environment ministry official after the government decided to set up another expert panel to review the report of Gadgil-led Western Ghats Ecology Expert Panel (WGEEP).
Most of these alternatives are on the lines of utilising existing infrastructure in an environmentally-friendly way rather than closing it down. These states propose to repair and restore to full capacity all the existing hydro-electric projects to ensure that the generation of power as envisaged is obtained, besides taking steps to ensure that transmission losses are minimised. Further, micro and mini hydel projects in eco-sensitive areas in the Ghats should be designed more to meet local power demands and not to feed the grids, as power lines are needed to evacuate power from these plants.
The panel report had recommended banning mining in 60% of hill areas falling in six states over the next five years and not permitting any new mines in another 15% of the Western Ghats area, which is a globally recognised biodiversity rich zone. But these states want ?critical? projects to continue.
Senior ministry officials say the states? feedback would be considered by a new committee that the ministry plans to set up to look into the Gadgil report. The final decision would be a ?balanced? amalgam of the two reports. ?The new committee will not supersede the Gadgil committee report. The ministry will involve other experts to decide on a balanced outcome before taking a final decision,? the official added.
With numerous east and west-flowing streams in the Ghats, the new committee is likely to suggest maintaining 20-30% of natural flows of these rivers and causing no disturbance to forests near these rivers.
The panel has said that the operations of hydro-electric stations (reservoir operations) are more in tune with the power needs rather than the downstream water needs.
?Hence, daily flow fluctuations created by peak and off peak operations of reservoirs in dammed rivers have led to upstream?downstream conflicts in many river basins. Similarly, diversion of flows into another river basin after power generation is creating problems of daily floods in the recipient basin and drought in diverted basins. These are turning into management issues which need to be addressed at a basin level. However, there is a lack of systematic river basin level data on ecological changes due to hydrological alterations created by dams,? the report said.