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Cuttack, Nov. 26: Roadblock to the construction of intake system in the Mahanadi river in Cuttack for water supply to Indian Oil Corporation Limited’s Paradip refinery project is far from being cleared.
The high court has refused to modify its order imposing restrictions on the construction till receipt of a report on its possible impact by a technical committee.
The Rs 29,777 crore-refinery project is scheduled to be commissioned in March 2012. Construction on the intake system has been stalled because of the stay. The high court had issued interim order on July 29 on a PIL.
Secretary of the Nationalist Lawyers Forum Nishikanta Mishra had filed the PIL expressing apprehension that construction undertaken inside the Mahanadi in Cuttack would pose threat to the city when the river is in flood.
The intake structure spread over 100 square metres on a landmass inside the Mahanadi near its right bank is the most crucial facility for water supply to the Indian Oil’s Crude Oil Refinery and Petrochemical Complex in Paradip.
The company filed a petition on September 12, seeking modification of the stay order on the ground that it was adversely affecting the project schedule. “The intake system is required to be over and commissioned by September 2011 to carry out trial running and commissioning in next two months to be ready to supply water to the project by November 2011,” the company stated.
Yesterday, when the petition came up for hearing, the high court constituted a technical committee to study the possible impact of construction.
“The two-judge bench of Justice B.P. Das and Justice M.M. Das directed the five-member expert committee to submit a report within three weeks,” counsel of the forum Ghasiram Verma told The Telegraph today.
“The committee has been asked to study possible impact of the construction on waterflow when the Mahanadi is in flood, on the irrigation needs of canals through which water is provided to farmlands from the Jobra barrage downstream, the ground water level and the Ring Road embankment on the right bank along northern side of the city,” Verma said.
“The committee headed by S.M. Patnaik (a retired chief engineer) includes four other retired chief engineers of irrigation department — Sudhakar Patri, Raghunath Prasad Das, Sridhar Behera and Baidhar Panda,” he said.
The Odisha water resources department had given approval for the construction on June 7, 2010.
The intake well is an engineering project in which there will be three gates and two pre-settlement tanks, where all sand and debris will be collected and then the clean water will be pumped and, through a 93km-long pipeline, carried to the company plant.
The company stated that the Union ministry of environment and forests and the Odisha Pollution Control Board had granted clearance to the project, including the water intake point at upstream of the Mahanadi barrage at Jobra in Cuttack.
The Odisha water resources department had accorded permission to the company to draw 40 million gallon water a day from the upstream Mahanadi barrage subject to availability of water during the non-monsoon and lean period.
