Tangedco prepares Rs 200 crore action-plan to clean-up flyash from water bodies

Chennai:

After the rap by National Green Tribunal, Tamil Nadu Generation and Distribution Corporation (TANGEDCO) has come up with a Rs 200 crore action plan to clean-up flyash from Buckingham Canal and Kosasthalayar Basin.

Ruling out that Ennore Creek is being polluted by North Chennai Thermal Power Station, a top official from Tangedco told Express that the action plan will be submitted to National Green Tribunal on Thursday.

“We have already cleared the ash deposits along the banks of Kosasthalayar which leaked from the cast iron pipe. We will be submitting the photos as evidence,” said the official.

“We used the poclains to clean up the deposits of ash which was pointed out to us due to leakage in the 7km to 8km long pipeline,” the official said.

The clean up will be carried out in two stages. Under the first stage, the focus would be to plug the leaks in the pipeline. “For this we have allocated Rs 5 crore. The pipelines will be patched up immediately,” the official said.

“Under the next stage we are allocating Rs 200 crore to replace the entire pipeline. This would take nearly 12 to 16 months as we have to shut down the pipes one by one to carry out the replacement,” the official said

He said the pipelines are 25 year old and has small punctures from which the slurry, that is transported from the North Chennai Thermal Power Station to Ash pond in the government land near the Ennore Creek, gets leaked and gets deposited here and there.

He also ruled out Tangedco has got anything to do with polluting the Ennore Creek. “The land where the ash pond is located is a government land alloted to us when the thermal plant came up. “We are clearing the ash as and when the pond fills up,” he said.

The action plan by Tangedco has been drafted after National Green Tribunal (NGT) warned it that its North Chennai Thermal Power Station (NCTPS) would be shut down if discharge of toxic fly ash into water bodies at Ennore is not contained within a week.

The green bench has also proposed to form a committee, comprising soil scientist, hydrologist and biodiversity experts, to assess the impacts to creek, mangroves, Buckingham canal and other water bodies during the course of clean-up.

Interestingly, the North Chennai Thermal Power Station has drawn flak from the Comproller and Auditor General Report which has stated that the plant is operating without the consent of Tamil Nadu Pollution Control Board. The report has stated that TNPCB has yet to give its consent as the two plants did not revamp existing pollution control systems like Electrostatic Precipitators (ESPs) and not installing and connecting online continuous effluent monitoring systems with TNPCB’s server.

Factfile:

1. Tamil Nadu Generation and Distribution Corporation has come up with a Rs 200 crore action plan to clean-up flyash from Buckingham Canal and Kosasthalayar Basin.

2. The fly ash deposited in the water bodies is due to leakage in the 25 year old cast iron pipe

3. TANGEDCO has allocated Rs 5 crore to patch up the leaks.

4. It will allocate Rs 200 crore to replace the entire pipeline.

5. The whole exercise will be carried out in 12 to 16 months