The Centre plans to set up two new Ultar Mega Power Plants (UMPPs) in Orissa. Those projects are proposed to come up in locations closer to sea and will have a generating capacity of 4000Mw each.

Though the locations have not been identified, 5 possible locations have been short listed for the purpose. It includes Kirtania (Balasore district), Dhamara (Bhadrakh district), Paradeep (Jagatsinghpur district) Astharanga (Puri district) and Ganja (in Ganjam district).

These units will make use of the sea water for meeting their water requirement and the state will get 50 percent of the power generated from the two new UMPPs proposed to come up.

The Centre plans to set up 13 UMPPs in different states of the country. This includes Tamilnadu (2), Gujarat (2), Andhra Pradesh (2), Jharkhand, Maharashtra, Chhattisgarh and Karnataka, one each. Orissa was allotted one UMPP earlier at Sundergarh district.

Meanwhile, the exact location of the Sundergarh UMPP with an installed capacity of 4000 Mw is expected to be finalised soon. A sub-committee of the Union ministry of environment and forests (MoE&F), which visited various locations in the district, are expected to submit its report to the Union government on 16 April, after which a decision on the location of the plant will be decided.

Though the state water resources department has given conditional water allotment for the proposed project, the state has asked for creation of additional water reserves in certain sites. However, Centre is yet to agree to this proposal. Sources said, the Centre has agreed to bear the expenses for creation of additional reservoir capacity, but wanted that the work may be taken up by the state government.

Besides, the Union government has not agreed to the Orissa government’s stipulations to spend 5 percent of the net profit for the peripheral development of the area. It has sought the waiver of this stipulation for the project. However, the Orissa government is reported to have expressed it’s unwillingness to waive off this condition for the project.

The Rs 16,000 crore Sundergarh UMPP is expected to be commissioned by 2013 and the state will get about 1300Mw (32.5 percent of the total generation) from this project. A Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) named as Orissa Integrated Power Limited (OIPL) has already been formed and coal blocks allotted in Meenakshi, Meenakshi-B and Dipside Meenakshi with a reserve of 880 million tonnes.

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