Bengaluru: Greens upset by gas power plant

Bengaluru: The 370 MW gas-based power plant that was in the making for the past few years may finally see the light of the day by the end of the month. However, the plant has been facing stiff resistance from  environmentalists for its close proximity to apartments and the Yelahanka Lake.

K.S. Sangunni, Chairperson of the Yelahanka Puttenahalli Lake and Bird Conservation Trust said the plant is being built at a distance of barely 300 metres from the lake.

“Across the world a minimum of 1 km buffer zone from the water body is maintained for power plants Pollution is one of the issues but here the wetland, which is between the Yelahanka and Puttenahalli lake is destroyed by the construction of a culvert and this has impacted the natural method for purification,” he added.

Sangunni has added that he had approached the High Court in which the National Green Tribunal (NGT) was a respondent but the efforts were futile.

The volunteers at the trust have started a fund raising campaign to assess the impact of power plant near the lake by consultants and to provide a possible support to protect the environment by evaluating possibilities of reducing the impact of power plant in a proximity to lakes.

The power plant is coming up in the place of defunct diesel plant. “We will call eminent consultants to study the transformation and topography. There will be a huge impact on the bio-diversity due to the sewage inflow into the freshwater and the environmental pollution due to the plant. The plant had come up on the green area and the defunct diesel plant, the construction of which cost a lot of trees is left as it is,” Sangunni commented.

The Yelahanka Puttenahalli lake is a home to birds such as darter, painted stork, black-crowned night herons, purple herons and other varieties.