KARACHI, March 23 The Sindh Environmental Protection Agency (Sepa) has asked the Pakistan Electric Power Company (Pepco) to conduct an environmental audit of its thermal power station existing at Guddu (Sindh) through some independent environmental monitors.
Pepco was asked to do so after environmentalists expressed their concerns at a public hearing held here on Saturday.
The public hearing was held to discuss the environmental impact assessment (EIA) report submitted by Pepco about the installation of a 747-megawatt combined cycle power plant at the Guddu thermal power station, which is situated at the right bank of the River Indus near Guddu Barrage.
Speaking at the hearing, Sepa Director-General Naeem A. Mughal said that the independent environmental audit would help in verifying environmental compliances presently given by the power station and would suggest a reliable picture pertaining to the prevailing environmental issues, if any, caused due to the operation of the years-old power plants in the area. It would also help in ascertaining the level of pollutants if the plants were generating them, he added.
Referring to the latest EIA reports pertaining to the new combined cycle power plant, he said that any no-objection certificate in this regard would be granted by Sepa only after receiving the required environmental audit report.
Pepco has planned to install an additional 747-MW combined cycle power plant comprising two gas turbines of 243 MW each, two heat recovery steam generators followed by one steam turbine having a capacity of 261 MW and associated equipment.
The proponents told the public hearing that the plant would use natural gas as its primary fuel source while high-speed diesel will be used as the back-up fuel. The gas turbines for the proposed project have been improved in design and have efficiency with combined cycle up to 56 per cent.
The project director of the plant, Qazi Akhtar, said that the steam power plant units 1 and 2 at the Guddu power plant were commissioned in 1974 and had completed their useful life, while third and fourth machines set up in the first half of the 1980s were also close to outliving their utility and that was why a decision had been taken to have the new combined cycle plant. The proposed plant is meant to overcome the gap of 450 MW caused in the wake of the removal of the four old machines.
He said that there would be no issue of resettlement of people likely to be affected due to the proposed project as there were only 50-60 illegal occupants in the new project area and these too had voluntarily started vacating the place.
Earlier, the participants of the hearing had criticised the consultants of the project for giving incomplete information on various sensitive issues, including the resettlement issues.
They also said that the baseline study of natural environment and socioeconomic environment was based on one-time acquired and old data, which was not valid for understanding the potential project impact and framing of mitigation measures.
Environmentalists also raised the issue of disposal of operation related wastewater and management of hazardous material and gaseous emissions and suggested a proper environmental set-up at the Guddu thermal power plant. They also called for modification of the EIA report.
Director (technical) of Sepa, Waqar H. Phulpoto, and Imran Sabir, the official in charge of the EIA section, conducted the proceedings.
The proponents concluded that under the normal operation, the plant would meet the ambient air quality target standards.
Only if the existing and proposed power plants are operated on furnace oil and high-speed diesel, there is a risk that the standards will exceed, which, however, is unlikely to happen as the historical data indicates the gas is normally available to the existing plant and only rarely it is operated on oil, they maintained.