BHUBANESWAR: The National Thermal Power Corporation (NTPC) has requested the state government to identify over 340 acre of degraded forest land for compensatory afforestation for its stage-II power project at Darlipali in Sundargarh district.
The national thermal power major which is in the process of setting up another supercritical unit of 800 MW coal-fired plant under its second phase expansion programme has informed the state government that 170.12 acre of forest land will be diverted for construction of the main plant, ash dyke and additional reservoir. The company requires double the size of the forest land for compensatory afforestation.
Regional executive director of NTPC had raised the issue at a recent high level meeting chaired by chief secretary Pradeep Jena. The chief secretary has asked the Forest department to identify 340.24 acre of land from the available land bank for compensatory afforestation.
The third unit of the Darlipali project has been hanging fire for a long time over forest clearance and other land related issues. The national PSU has also requested the state government to allot an additional corridor of 15 metre for its water pipeline project for the stage-II plant. The company has a 50 metre corridor pipeline for the first two units.
NTPC has initially planned to set up an ultra mega power project of 4,800 MW in three phases of 1600 MW (2x800 MW) each. The first unit of 800 MW capacity was fully commissioned in March 2020 and the second of similar capacity was commissioned in September, 2021. If the forest land and other issues are resolved early, NTPC is likely to award the project contract by 2024, sources in the state government said.
The other issues flagged by NTPC included re-phasing water allocation to stage-III Talcher Thermal Power Station of 1,320 MW (2x660 MW) under execution at Talcher. The project execution was considerably delayed over approval from the state government. Last year, the state-level single window clearance authority approved allocating six cusec of water from April 1, 2021 till March 31, 2025 and 44.5 cusec after that.
BHEL, the EPC contractors for the TTPS power plant has already delivered the broiler components comprising foundation material to the project site.