Environmental Monitoring: A Case Study of Puttalam Coal Power Project

The importance of this management tool to foresee potential environmental impacts and problems caused by proposed prescribed projects under the National Environmental Act and its use as a means to make projects more suitable to the environment are highly appreciative in terms of environmental conservation. The status of monitoring reflects clearly that more than 95% of monitoring indicators have not been monitored. Air emissions including TSPM are within the stipulated standards, Noise levels are within permissible levels and wastewater and water quality parameters comply with the tolerance limits. Discharged cooling water temperature is +40C higher than intake temperature and by increasing the heated water volume up to 54 m3/s, a further temperature increase could be expected. PCPP-CEB is operating without an Environmental Protection License (EPL) from its commissioned date which is a pre-requisite as per the law an industry to operate. Ignorance of placing a proper monitoring framework as stipulated in the EIA Report, the CEA and the Provincial Environmental Authority of North Western Province has lost of gaining the maximum advantage of mitigating impacts.