Page - 660 - in Book of Full Papers - Symposium Hydro Engineering

 The total submerged area (including the present river) will be approximately 320 hectares for design envisaged in Feasibility Report while 292 hectares for the optimized design, therefore, comparatively less terrestrial habitat will be submerged and consequently there will be a lower negative impact on the terrestrial ecology.  The Resettlement under optimized design is minor in comparison to that for Feasibility Report design.  For Feasibility Stage design, a new road approximately 1.5 km long was planned to be built from the existing blacktop road to the inlet of the power tunnel in relatively undisturbed pine and scrub forest. For this, vegetation would have to be cleared, and trees cut. For optimized design, a shorter road of 650m length is required.  The option for peaking mode operations as envisaged in Feasibility Report was discarded to avoid stress on the river ecology downstream of the power house and, therefore, a non-peaking operation of the powerhouse was adopted for the Project in the new design. Fig. 5 Tributaries of Poonch River Based upon changed design the relocation decreased from 128 to almost zero whereas on the basis of above studies/assessments EPA and wildlife departments appreciated Mira Power in terms of efforts towards protection of fish species in National Park specifically Endangered Mahaseer and Critically Endangered Kashmir Catfish and gave approval for:  Preparation and implementation of Biodiversity Action Plan (BAP) for achieving protection targets of Enhanced Protection Scenario at basin level protection 660