Despite protests from environmentalists, the State government has decided to go ahead with drawing of a 400 kV power line from Mysore to Kozhikode via Kodagu, to evacuate power from Kaiga nuclear plant, near Karwar.
A report of the technical committee set up by the State government to review suggestions on an alternative route for Mysore–Kozhikode for laying the line by the Power Grid Corporation of India Ltd. (PGCIL), said no other alternative route was viable for drawing the transmission line.
A three-member committee, headed by R.S. Shivakumara Aradhya of the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore on Wednesday submitted the 16-page report to the government.
Minister for Energy D.K. Shivakumar said, “the government is going ahead with the original route” to expedite the completion of the long-pending project. The PGCIL had commenced the Mysore–Kozhikode line works in December 2005, which was to have been completed in 2007.
Of the 210-km transmission line, work has been completed in a stretch of 155-km (92 km in Kerala and 63 km in Karnataka). The remaining 54.5-km line needs to be drawn in Kodagu, through 38 km of paddy fields and across 12 km of coffee plantations, while works covering a distance of 4.5 km in reserve forests in Virajpet, Madikeri and Hunsur had been completed.
In the line route proposed by PGCIL, about 6,000 trees would have to be removed within 12 km stretch of coffee plantation in Kodagu in addition to the 2,247 trees already felled in the forest stretch.
The committee recommended better compensation for paddy field owners than already proposed by PGCIL and preparation of a conflict mitigation plan for reducing elephant-human conflicts in coffee plantations. The D-line route either for laying underground cable or constructing overhead line was not feasible from the technical and ecological angle, it said. The Coorg Wildlife Society and Cauvery Sene were opposing the project.
