Thar coal project: ‘Reservoir being built without official approval’

Hearing of a petition filed by residents of the project site area held in SHC

HYDERABAD: The Sindh Engro Coal Mining Company’s (SECMC’s) drainage reservoir, a part of its $2billion coal mining and electricity generation project in Tharparkar, is being built without official approval. This was disclosed on Wednesday during the hearing of a petition filed by residents of the project site area in the Sindh High Court (SHC).

“No project shall be initiated before completion of the formalities and sanction or approval of the competent authorities,” reads the written response submitted by the Sindh Coal Authority (SCA) in the SHC. Any construction of the pond at alleged Ghorano village shall be illegal and without jurisdiction, according to SCA’s written response

The project, Effluent Disposal Scheme (EDS), includes a 37.5-kilometre-long pipeline of 50 cusecs and two reservoirs at Dukkur Cho and Ghorano sites in Thar coal and mining block II. The pipeline will carry brackish subsoil water, pumped out from the coalfields to enable the coal mining, to the reservoirs referred to as ‘dams’ by the petitioners.

The petitioners, Lakho Bheel and others, who belong to Ghorano, maintained that they are small growers with land in Islamkot’s villages, Shiv Jo Tar, Ghorano, Ahsan Shah Jo Tar and Suleman Haja. They added that the project has been initiated without obtaining Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) and will adversely affect 15 villages with a population of around 15,000 people and 20,000 livestock animals.

They also cited the project as a pollution threat to a wildlife sanctuary in Rann of Kutch and, consequently, a violation of the Sindh Wildlife Protection Ordinance 1972.

The SECMC, in its earlier reply in the SHC, asserted that approval from the Sindh Environment Protection Agency (SEPA) was duly obtained on February 10, 2016, for construction of the pipeline and two reservoirs. The company claimed that the petitioners did not raise objections against the project during the environmental hearing that was held prior to SEPA’s approval.

According to SECMC, the use of Ghorano reservoir will reduce after the power plant becomes operational by 2018. Up to 75% of the extracted water will be used to meet requirements of the power plant instead of being disposed in the reservoirs. “Ghorano reservoir will no longer be required for storage and containment purposes once the power plant is operational,” SECMC had submitted in the SHC.

However, SCA clarified that only one site at Dukkur Cho has been approved by SEPA for the reservoir project. The authority informed the court that 18 kilometres of the 37.5-kilometre-long pipeline have been laid, while the remaining work cannot continue due to opposition by the local villages.

The date for the next hearing of the case will be decided in the SHC’s registrar office, even though the petitioner’s lawyer, Advocate Ayatullah Khwaja, requested the court to fix the next date in early September.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 26^th, 2016.