The UPA Government had cleared the controversial 1750 MW Demwe lower Project proposed in the lohit district in Arunanchal Pradesh in 2011, even though no environmental impact study was carried out by the project proponents — Athena Energy Ventures and the State Government.
This was disclosed by Dr HS Singh, Member of the Environment Ministry’s Standing Committee of the National Board of Wildlife (NBWl) in a recent meeting, March 27 to be precise, of the Board. The project site is 8.5 kilometers away from the Kamlang Wildlife Sanctuary in the State.
An Environmental Impact Study (EIS) is used to provide a sufficient level of detail to demonstrate that a proposed development will have no negative impacts on the natural features or ecological functions of the subject and surrounding (“adjacent”) lands. An EIS does not ensure that development proposals will be approved.
Now the Standing Committee of the Board which is headed by Union Environment Minister Harsh Vardhan has asked the Dehradun-based Wildlife Institute of India (WII) to carry out hydrology / ecology study and submit the report to the Ministry in three months.
The wildlife activists and locals in the State had been opposing the project tooth and nail since it was planned and the protest got louder soon after it got the clearance from the Environment Ministry under the UPA regime.
Based on a complaint, last October, the National Green Tribunal (NGT ) had suspended the forest clearance of the proposed project which envisaged construction of 163.12 metre-high dam across River lohit, a major tributary of the Brahmaputra in Arunachal Pradesh.
For this project, the state's Department of Environment and Forest had granted permission to divert 1415.92 hectares (1408.30 hectares surface land + 7.62 hectares underground land) of forest land on August 26, 2013.
The main ground for the suspension of the forest clearance, according to Ritwick Dutta, the counsel for the appellants was that the clearance was not given after due procedure. “According to a Supreme Court order, all projects within10 kms of national parks and sanctuaries need clearance from the standing committee of the National Board for Wildlife (NBWl),” Dutta said.
“In case of this project, eight non-official members of the 12 members NBWl standing committee rejected the proposal. The four official members did not comment on the proposal during the meeting. But finally the clearance was given by the minister, Jayanthi Natarajan,” Dutta added. Of the three approvals needed, the dam project has already received the environmental one, while the Forest Advisory Committee is deliberating on the forest clearance.
The majority of the Standing Committee of the National Board of Wildlife (SC-NBWl) strongly recommended against giving the project wildlife clearance, and Natarajan has disregarded its objections.
lower Demwe is to be located where the lohit plummets from the hills to the plains, near a site called Parasuram Kund. Such geographical transitional zones are critical ecological locations.
Jagdish Krishnaswamy, a hydrologist at the Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and Environment, an NGO felt that capturing water in the reservoir for several hours a day will leave the water level so low that the river “will become inhospitable” for the Ganges dolphin, a critically endangered species.
The people of Assam downstream of the dam too opposed the proposed construction, fearing their livelihoods will be severely affected.
