Winds of disaster

ANOTHER power project has caught theeye of the greens. This time, it is theus power giant Cogentrix's plans to setup a 1,000 mw plant in the forests of theWestern Ghats near Mangalore inKarnataka. Environmentalists contendthat the Rs 4,387 crore plant could causeacid rain over the forests as the discharge from the 4 units of the plant canspread far and wide assisted by strongwinds. According to them, the decision of the plant to use only imported coalinstead of the Indian variety could prove costly for the ecology as imported coal has a higher sulphur content.

Raghavendra Gadagkar of the Centre for Ecological Studies, Indian Insttute of Sciences, Bangalore feels that theexact nature of the impact of the plantneeds to be investigated thoroughly.