NTPC hydel project may be all but gone in Uttarakhand glacier burst
Glacier burst: Dhauliganga hydropower project damaged. (PTI
State-run NTPC’s 520-MW Tapovan-Vishnugad hydel project on Dhauliganga river in Uttarakhand may be all but gone in Sunday’s flash flood in Rishiganaga river triggered by a glacier burst in the state’s Chamoli district.
Preliminary reports said the flash flood has washed away the dam and office, accounting for about 60% of the completed construction work. Initial estimates put the cost of the dam and the office at Rs 450 crore.
Company executives said chairman Gurdeep Singh left for the project site with a team of executives to co-ordinate rescue and relief operations with government agencies and take stock of the damage.
The executives said about 70% of the project work had been completed. The reports suggest at least 60-70% of the construction may have been lost.
This is the second setback for the Rs 13,500-crore project, which had suffered damage in the flash flood of June 2013. This time a glacier broke off in Reini village of Joshimath, setting off a massive flow of ‘cold lava’ made of snow, water, silt and boulders. This huge mass flowed down Rishiganga, a major tributary of Dhauliganga, and sliced through a 13-MW private hydel project.
The debris then slid down to swamp the Tapovan-Vishnugad project. Uttarakhand chief minister Trivendra Singh Rawat said silt and debris had entered 150 metres into a 250-metre tunnel, “trapping” an estimated 40 workers.
The project has been delayed by more than eight years because of the geological surprises encountered during drilling tunnels and the damage in 2013. Construction had begun in November 2006 and the first of the four units was to come on stream in September 2012.
There were also reports of THDC’s 444-MW Pipal Koti and Jaypee group’s 400-MW Vishnuprayag projects also suffering damage in the deluge.
The Tapovan-Vishnugad project is being built near Tapovan village, about 11 km upstream of the confluence of Dhauliganga and Alaknanda rivers near Joshimath. The barrage site is next to the Joshimath-Malari road, 15 km south-east of Joshimath.
The project has a 3,100 sq km mountainous catchment area that includes the Nanda Devi Basin, which drains into Rishiganga. About 46% of the catchment is covered in snow and extends up to Nanda Devi, the second-highest mountain in India at 7,817 m. About 90 km of the Dhauliganga flows above the barrage.
