Skip to main content

Green Tribunal admits case on Lower Subansiri project

The National Green Tribunal (NGT) on Monday admitted a case pertaining to the ecological issues in the downstream of the Lower Subansiri Hydro Electric Project dam by the National Hydroelectric Power Corporation (NHPC) Limited.

Filed by NGO Assam Public Works and admitted by Justice Swatantar Kumar, who issued notices to the NHPC, the Ministry of Environment and Forest, the Power Ministry and the governments of Assam and Arunachal Pradesh, the NHPC has to submit a reply to the tribunal by January 29 next.
‘No rational basis’
The petitioner said while the NHPC had initially planned to release only six cusecs from the dam for 20 hours or so when the project would be “off-grid,” eight years after starting the project in 2005, the NHPC has announced that they will release 220-250 cusecs by keeping one turbine running which is not based on any rational basis.
The petitioner has prayed for a suitable opening through the dam at a suitable level for flow of ‘sustenance water’ of 450 cusec, which is the average minimum of the lean water flow over a period, for the survival of the Indian Gangetic Dolphins and other aquatic animals. The petitioner also prayed for technologically-sound embankments up to the confluence with the Brahmaputra so that flushed sediments from the reservoir do not destroy the agricultural fields of the villages as has happened in NEEPCO’s Ranganadi project. — PTI


Petition filed for ‘sustenance water’ for survival of aquatic animals

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

NGT terminates chairmen of pollution control boards in 10 states (downtoearth,)

Cracking the whip on 10 State Pollution Control Boards (SPCBs) for ad-hoc appointments, the National Green Tribunal has ordered the termination of Chairpersons of these regulatory authorities. The concerned states are Himachal Pradesh, Sikkim, Tamil Nadu, Uttarakhand, Kerala, Rajasthan, Telangana, Haryana, Maharashtra and Manipur. The order was given last week by the principal bench of the NGT, chaired by Justice Swatanter Kumar. The recent order of June 8, 2017, comes as a follow-up to an NGT judgment given in August 2016. In that judgment, the NGT had issued directions on appointments of Chairmen and Member Secretaries of the SPCBs, emphasising on crucial roles they have in pollution control and abatement. It then specified required qualifications as well as tenure of the authorities. States were required to act on the orders within three months and frame Rules for appointment [See Box: Highlights of the NGT judgment of 2016 on criteria for SPCB chairperson appointment]. Having ...

High dose of Vitamin C and B3 can kill colon cancer cells: study (downtoearth)

In a first, a team of researchers has found that high doses of Vitamin C and niacin or Vitamin B3 can kill cancer stem cells. A study published in Cell Biology International showed the opposing effects of low and high dose of vitamin C and vitamin B3 on colon cancer stem cells. Led by Bipasha Bose and Sudheer Shenoy, the team found that while low doses (5-25 micromolar) of Vitamin C and B3 proliferate colon cancer stem cells, high doses (100 to 1,000 micromolar) killed cancer stem cells. Such high doses of vitamins can only be achieved through intravenous injections in colon cancer patients. The third leading cause of cancer deaths worldwide, colon cancer can be prevented by an intake of dietary fibre and lifestyle changes. While the next step of the researchers is to delineate the mechanisms involved in such opposing effects, they also hope to establish a therapeutic dose of Vitamin C and B3 for colon cancer stem cell therapy. “If the therapeutic dose gets validated under in vivo...

What's ailing Namami Gange programme?(DTE)

Winters are extremely hectic for Sushma Patel, a vegetable grower in Uttar Pradesh’s Chunar town. Her farm is in the fertile plains of Ganga where people grow three crops a year. But this is the only season when she can grow vegetables. And before that, she needs to manually dig out shreds of plastic and wrappers from her one-hectare (ha) farm. “This is all because of the nullah,” she says, pointing at an open drain that runs through her field, carrying sewage from the neighbourhood to the Ganga. “Every monsoon, the drain overflows and inundates the field with a thick, black sludge and plastic debris. We cannot even go near the field as the stench of sewage fills the air,” she says. But Patel has no one to complain to as this is the way of life for most people in this ancient town. About 70 per cent of the people in Chunar depend on toilets that have on-site sanitation, such as septic tanks and pits. In the absence of a proper disposal or management system, people simply dump the faec...