NTPC plant in Bihar village likely to face closure threat

Kahalgaon Super Thermal Power plant will face closure after 2017 if it fails to build a new lagoon for dumping waste ash slurry because of encroachment on its land in a nearby village where it has to come up.

“If a new Ash Dyke Lagoon-3D does not come on time there is a danger of closure of the plant after 2017,” Group General Manager of NTPC Kahalgaon N N Mishra told PTI.

Mishra said the proposed lagoon has to come at Majdaha village, about 2.5 km from the plant in Kahalgaon in Bhagalpur district, but due to encroachment on the land the work could not start.

He said the NTPC authorities have approached Bhagalpur district administration several times on the problem but so far the issue had not been resolved.

When contacted Bhagalpur District Magistrate Adesh Titarmare said that he was aware of the issue and would soon call a meeting of the people concerned, including NTPC officials and villagers on the problem.

“A strategy would be devised soon to clear the encroachment for making of lagoon. We will not let NTPC suffer its operation,” the DM said.

The NTPC GGM said after filling of lagoon A,B and C the plant got a new lagoon digged on June 15 this year for dumping its ash slurry.

“But, the lagoon 2 has the potential to function for nine months and after that there is no other option but to create lagoon 3 at Majdaha village,” Mishra said.

Seventh plant
Kahalgaon unit is the seventh in the series of Super Thermal Power project set up by NTPC in 1987.

It has installed capacity of 4x210 MW (Stage I) and 3x500 MW (stage-2) totalling 2,340 MW. It provides 41 per cent of the total electricity generated to Bihar.

The NTPC Kahalgaon GGM said they took utmost care for waste management by creating check points.

Giving details, he said the plant had six bagging machines from which ash slurry were filled in big bags and transported to North Eastern states of Assam and Tripura among others for its utilisation in cement manufacturing.

Besides, there were seven ash brick and block making machines within the plant from which about 60,000 brick was manufactured daily.

“These ash bricks are used in construction work within plant area,” Mishra added.
He said there were three Ambient Air Quality Monitoring stations which regularly tested quality of air in and around the plant area and the results so far had been encouraging.