The National Board for Wild Life (NBWL) has decided to grant clearance to a proposal submitted by the high-power committee (HPC) on Sabarimala for increasing the height of the Kunnar weir in the Sabarimala forests and for laying an additional eight-km waterline from the weir to the Sannidhanam.
The decision was taken at an NBWL meeting chaired by A.N. Jha, Secretary to the Ministry of Environment, Forests, and Climate Change, in New Delhi on Tuesday, G. Muralikrishnan, Travancore Devaswom Board Chief Engineer, said.
Mr. Muralikrishnan, accompanied by G. Mahesh, chief architect of the Chennai-based Pithavadian and Partners, the consultants of the Sabarimala Master Plan, represented the HPC at the meeting.
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The NBWL decision comes in the wake of a recommendation made by the Kerala government for raising the weir height on the basis of a Kerala High Court order on February 6, 2013, directing the State (Forest Department) and the TDB to augment the capacity of the weir and laying a pipeline to the Sannidhanam in the interests of the pilgrims.
The NBWL also cleared an HPC request for allotting 0.655 ha (1.61 acre) of forestland to the TDB for laying the proposed water line.
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The HPC had proposed capacity augmentation of the Kunnar weir with a view to addressing the drinking water problem at the holy hillock during the pilgrim season.
The 3.5-metre high weir has a capacity to store 50 lakh litres of water and the HPC decision is to augment its storage capacity by 40 lakh litres by increasing the weir height by 2.5 metres without doing any harm to the forest environs.
A team of the Centre for Earth Science studies, Thiruvananthapuram, too found that the capacity augmentation of the weir would not do any harm to the environment due to the rocky terrain.
Mr. Mahesh said on Tuesday that the new waterline (300 mm) would be laid parallel to the old pipeline along the Kunnar-Sannidhanam stretch.