In these days of heightened environmental awareness and activism, it might seem odd to celebrate a major infrastructure project located amidst the dense forest tracts of the Western Ghats. But development has this way of showing up even a project that might seem unacceptable to the discerning citizenry of today as one of the finest examples of administrative far-sightedness, efficiency in implementation and long-term positive yield. On Monday, one such project would celebrate its golden jubilee, forgotten by most, including the agency that made it a reality in record time! It goes by the name Sabarigiri, a 300-MW hydroelectric project dedicated to the nation by the then Vice President V.V. Giri on August 28, 1967.
Fifty years after its dedication, the Sabarigiri hydroelectric project continues to be second only to Idukki in its generation capacity and has been lighting up ‘God’s own country’, causing no harm to the forest environs of the Periyar Tiger Reserve or to the Pampa river, which is deemed as the lifeline of Kerala’s Central Travancore region. Carrying many uniqueness in its fold, Sabarigiri remains a milestone in Kerala’s infrastructure development history. The legendary M.N. Govindan Nair, the then Power Minister, could be said to have first cut his teeth into big ticket infrastructure development getting the Sabarigiri project on stream.
Power self-sufficient
Proximity to Sabarimala, South India’s most popular pilgrim centre highin the Western Ghats, accounts for the name of the project. Those were days when there was not even a calculator for computing. Engineers, draftsmen and other technical hands had done the entire paper work manually. At the time of its commissioning, the Sabarigiri project enjoyed the special status of having a capacity higher than the capacity of all the other power projects in the State put together. Sabarigiri also elevated Kerala to a power self-sufficient State in 1967. However, with the demand for power growing at a fast clip, there was need for more such projects and, once again, Govindan Nair was on the scene, using his vision and administrative acumen to make the 390-MW first stage of the Idukki hydel project, with its unique arch dam, a reality in 1976. It took as many as 10 years for the second stage of Idukki to become operational, making it the State’s largest power project with a capacity of 780 MW.
Gestation period
Normally, the construction of a major hydropower plant is expected to be completed within eight to ten years. Sabarigiri is the only major project in the State that took a gestation period of a mere five years, thanks to the commitment, hard work and good teamwork under the leadership of then KSEB chief engineer V. Renganathan, backed by the government headed by E.M. Sankaran Namboodiripad, though it might seem an oddity that the project, with an outlay of ₹36 crore, was implemented with U.S. funding and technical assistance, after the infamous ‘Liberation Struggle’ that ended in the ouster of the first Communist Ministry. The Minister Counsel of the U.S. Embassy in India Herbert P. Piwack was among the dignitaries who attended the ceremonial commissioning of the project on August 28, 1967. The project also had the somewhat unique distinction of having been launched and commissioned by the same person, but holding two different public offices, by V.V. Giri the Governor and V.V. Giri, the Vice President.
The Sabarigiri project has a dam across the Pampa and two other dams — Kakki and Anathode — on its tributary, Kakki, with a two-mile interconnecting tunnel. The huge quantity of water trapped at Kakki is carried through a three-mile power tunnel to the penstocks and the power house at Moozhiyar. The reservoirs have a combined storage capacity of 16,900 mcft. The biggest of its kind in Kerala when it was taken up, Sabarigiri is overshadowed only by the bigger Idukki hydroelectric project. The penstock pipes were fabricated at a modern factory in Kochi, using 14,000 tonnes of high tensile steel secured from America. The machine-mixed concrete was taken to the top of the dam using cable-ways and concrete carrying buckets. Even after 50 long years, the project components are in a good shape, except for the normal wear and tear. The Kakki dam is almost seepage-free, say experts.
Power generation
Average generation from the Sabarigiri power house over the last 25 years has been more than the targeted generation by 5 to 6%. The total installed capacity of the project was raised to 340 MW from 300 MW in 2011. Sabarigiri is now a power generation cluster with downstream power projects being commissioned at Kakkad (50 MW), Ullungal (7 MW), Karikkayam (15 MW), Maniyar (12 MW) and Mambara (6 MW). The 50-MW Kakkad hydroelectric project that utilises the tail race waters of the Sabarigiri project was sanctioned in 1976 with an outlay of ₹18.60 crore, but corruption and trade union militancy ensured that it did not get off the drawing board all that soon. Though it was scheduled to be commissioned in 1986, it took 23 years for the KSEB to commission the project and that too at a whopping cost of ₹153.5 crore, about 725% above the original estimate of ₹18.6 crore.
