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• The state may pride itself over its hydropower generation potential, but the environmental cost that it has to bear for such projects is something not many have looked at. Authorities have been working to use all four major rivers of the state, Ravi, Satluj, Chenab and Beas, to generate electricity. This is going to leave riverbeds parched and cause damage to flora and fauna. Now, state forest department, in association with World Bank, is preparing the master plan for catchment area treatment for these rivers. Additional chief secretary (forests) Avay Shukla, who was appointed by Himachal Pradesh high court to look into the matter, had pointed out in his report that effects of large-scale felling of trees, muck dumping and diversion of water had never been studied by state government before allotting the projects.
• After finding projects were being approved on the basis of individual (project's) environment impact assessment, Shukla's report had suggested that strategic environment assessment of the entire river basin should be conducted before accepting any project and approval should not be granted without that. He had found that environmental impact assessment and environment master plans for individual projects did not address the larger concerns even as "where environment impact is concerned, the whole is larger than the sum of the parts". The committee recommended that state government should carry out basin-wise environment impact assessment.
• Now, forest department has come out with the integrated catchment area treatment (CAT) master plan for Satluj river and work to formulate that for other three major rivers is also on. This plan is based on geographical information system (GIS). As majority of hydro power projects in the state are coming up on Satluj river, the first CAT Plan has been created for its basin under which around 20,000 sq km of catchment area of the river has been covered, sources said. They added that earlier, CAT plans were site-specific; but now, the masterplan would take care of entire basin so that treatment can be carried out in a systematic manner taking into account the extent of degradation in different pockets besides focusing on silt levels in the river. Principal chief conservator of forests R K Gupta said as power projects were coming up in the state on a large scale, forest department and World Bank had prepared the master plan for catchment area treatment for all four major rivers of state under which 2.5% of total project cost would be spent on the treatment of river basins.

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