KATHMANDU: The preparation of the detailed project report (DPR) under the Nalgad Hydropower Project in Nalgad, Jajarkot is still awaited for over six years despite the promised deadline of thirty-one months.

It may be noted that the Nalgad Hydropower Company, Australia’s Snowy Mountain Engineering Corporation (SMEC), MWH Global and the Nepal’s Udaya JV signed an agreement in 2016 to complete the DPR within the next 31 months.

Local civil society leader Rajendra Bikram Shah said the Jajarkot folks are disappointed due to a continuous delay in the DPR preparation despite the extension of deadline time and again. It is said the works to dig a tunnel for extracting soil sample at the site of the Power House of the project have been in limbo.

According to project engineer Padam Thapa, the tunnel works are likely to be completed within a week. As he said, project’s environmental impact assessment is being studied by the Ministry of Forests and Environment, and the deadline for preparation of DPR has been extended time and again.

The SMEC has been urged to complete the task soon and all the reports are expected to come by mid-July next year.

The Power House of the project is based in Andheri Stream at Barekot municipality-8 while its proposed dam site is at Dalli of Nalgad. It is said that an underground powerhouse will be built near the confluence of Nalgad and the Thulo Bheri rivers.

An 8.5 kms main tunnel and three subsidiary tunnels measuring two to three kilometers will be constructed from Andheri Stream to Dalli along with the 500-meter long and 248- meter high dam. It is said that 470 million cubic meters of water will accumulate in the reservoir.

The project will have four turbines and each turbine will have the capacity of generating 104.250 megawatts of electricity.

Electricity to be produced by the project will be connected to the Kohalpur substation through a 400 KV double circuit transmission line.

The construction of a 112 km-long transmission line from the project site to Kohalpur is underway.

The people of the areas affected by the project have already received the compensation.