10 April – In a tragic incident in Reliance’s Sasan Ultra Mega Power Project in Singrauli, Madhya Pradesh, two people and at least 4 reported missing when the dyke wall of ‘Ash Pond’ collapsed causing sludge flooding in the nearby habitation and agricultural lands. Standing crops are also reported to have been damaged due to toxic waste.

 

This is the third such incident of Ash leakage in the last one year in Singrauli. Earlier, a similar breach in the dyke wall occurred in the ash pond of another power project run by National Thermal Power Corporation Ltd. ( NTPC) in the same locality in October 2019 followed by another similar breach in a power plant run by Essar plant in the same location.

 

Governments and other reports have blamed the company’s management time and again for erecting substandard dyke walls and not clearing waste materials, particularly near human habitations.

 

                             

Pics courtesy- gaonconnection                                       Pics courtesy –inshorts

 

Singrauli is the home to 10 coal-based power plants with a capacity of over 21000 megawatts. Coal fly ashes are produced as a by-product of the burning of pulverised coal during the process of electricity generation in the thermal power plants. They are considered as the most toxic for human health and global pollutants due to their hazardous composition.

 

Although perceiving its importance in the mineralogical recovery, the government has been utilizing it commercially, but still many of the fly ashes are stored as wet ashes in the Ash Ponds to minimize the concentration of fly dust. The pond storage of such ashes are in large volumes, which requires the construction of strong dyke walls or impounding walls as any breach in ash pond leads to disaster in a big way