Hydroelectric Power Projects In Manipur

Subject: Environment

Context- Manipur’s push for dams threatens local ecology and communities.

Concept-

In 1983, a hydropower project called the Ithai barrage on Manipur (or Imphal) river that uses Loktak as the reservoir came up.
As of March 2022, the Loktak multipurpose project is Manipur’s only functional hydropower project, with an installed capacity of 105 megawatts (MW) of electricity, and is Manipur’s main source of power.
Flood has become a regular phenomenon both in the villages upstream and downstream of the Ithai barrage.
Since then the demand for decommissioning the Ithai barrage has continued to grow. In 2017, the then Manipur governor Najma Heptullah had said at a programme that she was “working very hard for the removal of Ithai barrage” due to its adverse economic and ecological impact.
However In 2020, following the union government’s drive, the Manipur state government decided to push for hydropower projects.
It said it estimated the state’s hydropower potential at more than 2,000 MW and identified 29 new projects with a total proposed installed capacity of 300 MW.
These include projects with a capacity as low as 0.44 MW and 0.78 MW to 49.5 MW.
Five of them are above 25 MW of proposed/tentative installed capacity, meaning large dams –
- Barak 4 HE Project (49.5 MW),
- Irang 3 HE Project (46.50 MW),
- Ijai HE Project (28.70 MW),
- Imphal HE Project (28.3 MW) and
- Barak 3 HE Project (26 MW).
The state planned to get the detailed project reports for these 29 projects to be formulated by 2022.

Loktak Lake:

It is the largest freshwater lake in Northeast India and is famous for the phumdis floating over it.
Phumdis are the heterogeneous mass of vegetation, soil and organic matter at various stages of decomposition.
KeibulLamjao National Park is also one of the Phumdis in the lake.
It is the only floating national park in the world and is the last natural refuge of endangered Sangai deer.
Loktak lake is a wetland of international importance under the Ramsar Convention.
It has been listed under the Montreux Record since 1993 (the other wetland in Montreux is the Keoladeo National Park, Rajasthan).

Hydropower Scenario in India:

India is 5th globally for installed hydroelectric power capacity.
As of 31 March 2020, India’s installed utility-scale hydroelectric capacity was 46,000 MW or 12.3% of its total utility power generation capacity.
Hydropower potential is located mainly in northern and north-eastern regions.
Arunachal Pradesh has the largest unexploited hydropower potential of 47 GW, followed by Uttarakhand with 12 GW.
Unexploited potential is mainly along three river systems – the Indus, Ganges and Brahmaputra.
The hilly States of India mainly Arunachal Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu & Kashmir and Uttarakhand, and constitute around half of this potential. Other potential States are Maharashtra, Chhattisgarh, Karnataka and Kerala.
India also imports surplus hydroelectric power from Bhutan.
The public sector accounts for 92.5% of India’s hydroelectric power production.