The proposed waste-to-energy plant of the Kochi Corporation at Brahmapuram has run into fresh trouble with the State-level monitoring committee on Kerala Conservation of Paddy and Wetlands Act 2008 rejecting the application for reclamation of the paddy field in Puthenkurishu village for setting up the unit.
Listing out the “disastrous ecological consequences” involved in the reclamation, the two-member panel “strongly recommend not to give sanction for the conversion of the 6.3850 ha. of land in Puthenkurishu village of Ernakulam district.”
The committee had S. Leena Kumari, Professor and Head, Rice Research Station, Moncompu; and P. O. Nameer, Professor and Head, Wildlife Sciences, College of Forestry, of Kerala Agriculture University, as its members.
The panel reported that the Puthenkurishu paddy field, the site of the plant, “forms an extremely important ecological entity and conversion of these marshy lands will lead to long-standing and disastrous ecological consequences, including adversely affecting the water table in these areas.”
The report of the committee was accessed by The Hindu by invoking the provisions of the Right to Information Act.
The reclamation, apprehended the panel, would lead to “shortage of drinking water in and around these paddy fields, apart from harmfully affecting the ecology of the region.”
Incidentally, the plant has been proposed at the holding owned by the Kochi Corporation. GJ Eco Power Private Limited, the firm which won the bid for setting up the plant, proposes to convert municipal waste into energy through the gasification process.
It has been planned to construct and operate the plant on a Design-Build-Finance-Operate-and-Transfer mode. The ₹375-crore plant is expected to produce 10 MW of power from the waste collected from the Kochi Corporation and a few neighbouring local bodies.
The panel reported that “the entire area for the proposed site for the waste-to-energy project is part of the Puthenkurishu paddy field which is part of the Chellippadam padasekharam [paddy polder] in Puthenkurishu village and is marked as nilam [paddy field] in the Basic Tax Register (BTR) of the village.”
“The paddy field is less than 100 metres from the Kadambrayar and the Chithrapuzha. It has also been found to be an important abode for biodiversity as we could observe several species of birds, including migratory birds as well as birds of prey that have been included in Schedule I of the Wildlife (Protection) Act of 1972,” it said.
However, considering the importance of the project, it “recommended that an alternative site may be identified with in the 100 acres acquired by the Cochin Corporation for this purpose, excluding this wetland.”
The committee suggested that urgent steps should be taken to start paddy cultivation in these areas as part of the present State government’s policy of paddy cultivation in all the fallow lands of Kerala.
