The Nandikur Janajagriti Samiti has opposed the State government’s plan to set up an Ultra Mega Power Plant (UMPP) at Niddodi village in Dakshina Kannada district.
In a press release issued here, Executive President of the Samiti Balakrishna Shetty said that Niddodi had been recommended by the State government as an ideal site for the UMPP, which could not be implemented at Tadari in Uttara Kannada district.
The Samiti said that he had learnt that Chief Minister Jagadish Shettar had written a letter to the Union Minister of State for Power Jyotiraditya Scindia that the Power Company of Karnataka Limited and the Karnataka Industrial Area Development Board had carried out a site inspection in and around coastal area of Karnataka and had identified Niddodi village in Dakshina Kannada district as a suitable location and urged the Centre to take further steps. The 4,000 MW capacity coal-based UMPP would be implemented by the National Thermal Power Corporation (NTPC). For more than two years, a part of Dakshina Kannada district near Mangalore was in the list of critically-polluted clusters of India as assessed by the Central Pollution Control Board and it was cleared from the list in 2011-12. In the event of the UMPP coming up at Niddodi, the total burning of coal in the coast will be well over 55,000 tonnes a day with more than 10,000 tonnes of ash generated on a daily basis along with 30 kilograms of lethal mercury and various other carcinogenic pollutants which would remain localised due to restricted dispersion conditions of the region.
The thermal power plant of Udupi Power Corporation Ltd at Yellur is now burning about 12,000 tonnes of coal and generated ash and other waste close to 2,000 tonnes a day, the release said.
