Is NHPC the law?

India’s largest hydroelectric project is coming up on the Assam-Arunachal Pradesh border in one of the country’s most environmentally sensitive areas. The 2,000-MW Subansiri Lower Project (SLP) being developed by the National Hydroelectric Power Corporation (NHPC) proposes to dam the Subansiri river, the largest tributary of the mighty Brahmaputra.
Even as local communities in both states, social and environmental activists and even the “beneficiary” state governments (yet to sign MoUs with NHPC ) raise serious concerns about the shoddy manner in which NHPC has gone about planning and executing this project, work goes on full steam unaffected by “petty” issues such as violation of Supreme Court orders. After all, NHPC is the law here.
The SLP will use 4,000 hectares of forest land, submerge a portion of the Tale Valley sanctuary, destroy an elephant corridor, impact downstream wetlands (beels), dolphin habitat and local natural resource based livelihoods.
Compensatory mechanisms to offset losses due to submergence of rich forests will further impact agriculture and other use on community lands over a large landscape well beyond the submergence zone. Both the pre and post clearance period of this project has brought up many issues of concern: poor environmental and social impact assessment, legal violations by NHPC, subversion of environmental clearance procedures by the Central government, cosmetic public consultation and poor compliance of conditions of clearance. Some of these issues were highlighted on this page (22 March 2003, 3 July 2004 and 13 November 2004).
This year the Arunachal government has sent three letters (January, March and May 2005) to NHPC, repeatedly asking it to suspend work on the SLP. One of the key reasons cited for this is the inability of the State government to comply with the strict conditions imposed by the Supreme Court through its order dated 19 April, 2004 subject to the compliance of which final clearance under the Forest (Conservation) Act (FCA), 1980, was granted to the project in October 2004. In these letters, the government has expressed its intention to file a review petition before the Supreme Court seeking vacation/modification of its orders, pending the resolution of which it wanted the work suspended as it would otherwise amount to contempt of court. But in disregard of the repeated state government communications, NHPC has continued work in full swing at the SLP site. We have personally witnessed this during visits to the dam site in March and June 2005.
Copies of one or more of the three letters have also been marked to MoEF, Delhi and power ministry. While it is unknown how these ministries have responded to the content of these letters, whatever its response has been has not resulted in any change in the situation on the ground. As of June, several violations of environmental and forest laws continue at the dam site both in Assam and Arunachal Pradesh. For example, one condition stressed by the Supreme Court says, “Under no circumstances, the excavated material will be dumped either in the river or any other part of the national park/sanctuary or the surrounding forests.” In June, we witnessed earthmoving machines specifically employed at the riverbank to dump muck straight into the river! In May 2004, we had reported similar illegal dumping of muck and debris into the river to both the state and Central governments. Later, forest department officials in Arunachal Pradesh also reported this continued violation.
After a monitoring committee visit to the dam site in May, the regional office of the MoEF wrote to NHPC pointing out many violations taking place at the site. But in spite of all this, several violations continue. Since early 2001, more than three years before the final clearances were obtained, violations have continuously been reported in the project.
A few examples include: construction activity on illegally occupied forestland, extensive illegal collection of boulders from the Subansiri river, blocking of a crucial elephant corridor by erecting illegal fences.
While there was relatively strict monitoring by the local Assam FD officials in the pre-clearance period, things seemed to have deteriorated rapidly in recent times and NHPC has now fully established itself as the law. A number of serious current violations ongoing on the Assam side are been ignored. For example, while an application for diversion of a new chunk of forestland to build a hatchery is still pending and undecided by the MoEF, NHPC contractors have cleared the forest.
There is also a major concern about how seriously NHPC and MoEF, Delhi treat the compliance of conditions of clearances under forest and environmental laws. A multidisciplinary committee set up to monitor conditions of environmental clearance met for the first time in May, twenty-two months after the July 2003 environmental clearance! Another condition of this clearance requires that a comprehensive biodiversity study be submitted to the MoEF within a year.
As per the May site visit report of the monitoring committee, this study has not been started almost two years after the condition was laid down! It was bad enough that a project coming up in a global biodiversity hot spot received environmental clearance based on shoddy studies.
Post-clearance studies too have been treated as a formality. If this comprehensive biodiversity study had been ready on time as per the conditions of environmental clearance, it would have been available in July, 2004, before the decision to grant another important clearance — the final clearance under the FCA — was taken in October, 2004. It is obvious why the study was delayed in spite of being a mandatory condition. This appears to be the law of the NHPC at work in the SLP. The Arunachal Pradesh government approached the Supreme Court in May 2005 seeking vacation/ modification of its 19 April, 2004 order. We need to wait and watch whether and how ongoing violations by NHPC get addressed in the legal battle. Till then it will be violations as usual in the Subansiri Lower Project, especially since the Government of India has decided to be a mute spectator.