Tarapur plant makes part payment of water cess

The Tarapur Atomic Power Station (TAPS) has made a payment of Rs 7.2 crore to the Maharashtra Pollution Control Board (MPCB) in September as water cess. It is disputing a further claim of Rs 21 crore by the MPCB. It is only one fourth of the total cess of Rs 27.81 crore demanded by the board. The payment received is for the period May 2003 to July 2005.

In 2001, the board decided to claim a water cess from the Tarapur power unit from April 1983. Till July 2005, the total cess amounted to be Rs 27.81 crore. The board has been asking the power station to pay the cess but with not much success.

Under the Water (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Cess Act, industries are liable to pay a cess on water use.

There are four criteria for cess assessment for use of water for cooling, domestic use, processing (bio-degradable) and processing (non-biodegradable). The average consumption of water by the nuclear power plant is 20 lakh cubic meter per day (CMD).

Since 1983, the cess charged on a kilolitre (KL) of water has been changed twice. The first change took place in January 1992 and the second one in May 2003.

TAPS has not paid the water cess for the periods-1983 to 1992 and 1992 to 2003.

According to TAPS officials, the plant is not liable to pay the cess as nuclear plants have not been mentioned in the central notification for water cess incidence.

"In the central notification on water cess for industries, diesel and thermal power plants have been mentioned but there is no mention of nuclear plants. Because of this, we are not liable to pay the cess to MPCB. However, according to a new amendment, all industries are liable to pay cess and hence we are paying it from 2003 onwards," said U Ramamurty, station director, TAPS.

On the other hand, the state pollution board says that because nuclear power plants use water for operations, these also come under the category of thermal plant.

TAPS has asked the central environment ministry for exemption for the period between 1983 to 2003. At the same time, it has appealed to the appellate authority of MPCB too for exemption. But till now the government has not responded.

Earlier, TAPS has only two phases. But it went for an expansion in August and added phase 3 and 4.

The water cess till July was assessed only for the first two phases, but MPCB will now be assessing the other two phases too. The member secretary of the MPCB is the assessing authority under the act.

Although the uncertainty over the issue of recovering the rest amount from TAPS continues, MPCB has become the only state pollution control board to get water cess from a unit of the Nuclear Power Corporation.