Kathmandu- The production capacity of Lower Arun Hydropower Project has been increased. The installed capacity of the project has been increased from 474.25 MW to 669 MW.
The supplementary environmental impact assessment report of the project has been released for comments. The Ministry of Forests and Environment has published a supplementary environmental impact assessment report.
Due to changes in project design and components along with capacity, the area of land and the number of trees to be felled have also changed. But the cost has not changed that much.
Lower Arun is a run-of-river project. The gross head and net head of the project will be 216m and 213.3m respectively. The penstock length will be 580m. The penstock diameter will be 6.1m. The project is expected to generate 3,561 GWh of electricity.
According to the report, the 344.68 cubic meter/second flow coming out of the Arun 3 project tailrace on the left bank of the Arun river will be sent directly from the head pond through the intake gate to a 17.4 km long horseshoe-shaped tunnel with a diameter of 10.5 meters.
444 households will be affected by the proposed project. Affected households will be economically and physically displaced. 184 hectares of land will be required for the project. In which private land is 107 hectares, forest area is 70 hectares and government land is 6 hectares.
There has also been a big change in the number of trees being felled. In the previous report, there were 7,665 trees, now there are 16,198 trees.
The construction period has been reduced from 7 years to 5 years. The cost has increased from NPR 92.12 billion to NPR 92.67 billion.
Source: Bizness News
