Thermal Power Plants, Coal and Fly Ash Pollution: Your Rights

If you live near a coal-fired power plant, the law gives you real rights, even though it will almost never get the plant shut. The plant must hold consent from the State Pollution Control Board under the Air and Water Acts, follow the emission standards in the Environment (Protection) Rules, obey every condition of its environmental clearance, and utilise its fly ash under the notification of 31 December 2021. When it breaks those rules and you suffer for it, you can complain to the board, ask the regional office of the environment ministry to check clearance conditions, and go to the National Green Tribunal for directions and compensation.

This guide is the starting point for coal and power plant problems on our site. It explains what actually comes out of a thermal plant, which law covers each kind of pollution, who you complain to, and what the NGT does with these cases in practice. It also covers the plant's side: what boards check and where operators get caught out.

If your problem is narrower, go straight to the detailed guides on fly ash dumping rules and complaints, liability for an ash pond breach or a gas leak from a factory.

The essentials

Can I do anything about a thermal power plant polluting my village?

Yes, and you do not need to fight the whole plant to get somewhere. Every coal plant runs on permissions that come with written conditions: consent to operate from the State Pollution Control Board, an environmental clearance with its own list of conditions, and the emission standards that apply to its units. Your complaint is strongest when it points to one specific condition being broken and shows the harm it is causing you.

Vague complaints about a plant being dirty go nowhere. A complaint that says ash blows off the dry ash dyke every afternoon in April and May, that the dyke sprinklers are not working, that the grey film on wheat and roofs can be photographed, and that the consent requires dust suppression, is one an officer has to answer.

Be honest with yourself about the goal. A large power station supplies electricity to millions, and no tribunal is going to shut it because the village next door is dusty. What residents do win, often, is a joint inspection, directions to fix the ash handling or the coal yard, a monitoring station near the village, a deadline for clearing dumped ash, and compensation for proven losses. That is a realistic and worthwhile result.

What pollution does a coal power plant cause, and which rule covers it?

A thermal plant pollutes at several points, and each has its own rule and its own regulator. Matching what you see to the right rule is half the work.

What permissions does a thermal power plant need?

A coal plant needs prior environmental clearance under the EIA Notification 2006 before it is built or expanded. Large coal plants are category A projects appraised at the central level, and the process includes a public hearing near the site. The clearance letter carries a long list of conditions on stack height, ash utilisation, ash pond design, water use, green belt, monitoring and reporting. Those conditions are enforceable, and the plant must report on them every six months.

It also needs consent to establish and consent to operate from the State Pollution Control Board under section 21 of the Air Act and section 25 of the Water Act. Power plants are in the red category, so they are inspected more often. The consent order repeats many clearance conditions and adds the board's own on monitoring and discharge limits.

On top of that, the plant must meet the emission standards for thermal power plants in the schedules to the Environment (Protection) Rules 1986, which cover particulate matter, sulphur dioxide, oxides of nitrogen and mercury. These standards were tightened some years ago and compliance deadlines, particularly for sulphur dioxide controls, have been extended and modified more than once, so check the notification that currently applies to the particular plant before you allege a breach.

Is a power plant allowed to dump fly ash wherever it likes?

No. The fly ash utilisation notification of 31 December 2021, issued under the Environment (Protection) Act, makes coal and lignite power plants responsible for utilising the ash they produce, including the old ash already lying in their ponds, within set timeframes. Ash can go into bricks and blocks, cement, road and embankment work, filling of mine voids and low-lying areas under the applicable guidelines, and other listed uses. A plant that falls short pays environmental compensation.

What the notification does not allow is ash being tipped onto farmland, village commons, riverbanks or ponds in the name of utilisation. That is the most common fly ash complaint we see: a contractor collects ash from the plant, is paid for transport, and dumps it on the nearest empty land. The plant does not escape responsibility by blaming the contractor.

Fly ash is fine and light. Dry, it blows in the wind; wet, it moves as slurry. Either way it settles on crops, enters drains and makes water turbid. People living near ash dykes report eye irritation, coughing and a fine grey layer on everything. Keep a record of those effects, because health and crop damage is what turns a compliance complaint into a compensation claim.

How to complain against a thermal power plant

This is the order that works for most villages and colonies near a coal plant. It builds a paper trail the NGT will respect if the board does nothing.

Who checks whether the plant is following its clearance conditions?

Two regulators share the job, and many complaints fail because they go to only one. The State Board enforces consent conditions and the Air and Water Acts: it inspects, takes samples, issues show-cause notices and can direct closure or disconnection under section 31A of the Air Act and section 33A of the Water Act. The environment ministry's regional office monitors compliance with the environmental clearance and receives the plant's six-monthly compliance reports.

Those compliance reports are worth reading line by line. Plants often report a condition as complied with when the ground says otherwise: the green belt is a row of saplings, or the ash utilisation figure is high while the dyke keeps growing. A complaint that quotes the plant's own report back to it is hard to brush aside.

CPCB sets methods and standards and is often part of the joint committees the NGT forms, so copy it on serious complaints. Our guide to complaining when EC conditions are not followed explains the clearance route in more detail.

How do I prove the air near the plant is bad?

You usually do not have to prove it with your own instruments. The plant is required to run ambient air quality monitoring stations around it, and the board has its own data. Ask for both by RTI and compare the readings with the National Ambient Air Quality Standards, which set 24-hour limits of 100 µg/m³ for PM10 and 60 µg/m³ for PM2.5. Our guide on PM10 and PM2.5 standards explains how to read those numbers.

Look at where the stations are. If every monitor sits upwind of the plant, or inside the plant boundary, the data will look clean while the village downwind breathes the dust. Pointing out bad siting of monitors is a perfectly good complaint in itself, and joint committees have recommended relocating stations when residents raised it.

Our hand pumps and wells have changed since the ash pond came. What can we do?

Get the water tested first, through a government or NABL-accredited laboratory, and keep the sample records: who took it, when, from which source, and the chain of custody. Ask the State Board or the state groundwater authority to sample the wells too. Then ask, by RTI, for the plant's own groundwater monitoring data from the piezometers around its ash pond, which the clearance conditions usually require.

Older ash ponds were often built without proper lining, and leachate can carry metals into shallow aquifers over years. Proving the link needs a pattern, such as wells nearer the pond being worse, or readings that rose after the pond was filled. Our guide on proving groundwater contamination from industry explains how that evidence is built.

If the water is unsafe to drink, ask the district administration for an alternative supply straight away. That does not depend on proving who caused the contamination, and a tribunal later can direct the polluter to bear the cost.

What can the NGT order against a power plant?

In practice, the NGT's first step is usually to form a joint committee, often the State Board, CPCB, the regional office of the ministry and the District Magistrate, to inspect the plant and the affected area and report. The plant files its reply, residents can object to the committee's report, and the tribunal then passes directions. Applications against power plants are often disposed of with a set of directions to the plant and the regulators, with timelines.

Typical directions include clearing dumped ash and restoring the land, repairing or raising ash dyke embankments, installing or repairing dust suppression, covering conveyors and coal yards, meeting ash utilisation targets, adding ambient monitoring stations near villages, and paying environmental compensation assessed under the polluter pays principle. Where people have suffered loss, the tribunal can order compensation to them under section 15, often after a district-level assessment.

When Advocate B.K. Singh prepares an application against a power plant, he builds it around the plant's own documents: the clearance conditions, the consent order and the compliance reports, set beside dated photographs and the board's inspection findings. Tribunals respond to a precise breach far better than to a general plea that the plant is harming the area, and it makes the joint committee's job easier to frame.

A new thermal plant or expansion is coming near us. Can we stop it?

The best time to act is before the clearance is granted. Large coal projects go through a public hearing under the EIA Notification, and objections raised there go on record before the expert committee. Read the draft EIA report and the executive summary, which must be made available before the hearing, and raise specific points: wrong baseline data, missing villages, water sources not counted, ash pond location, cumulative impact with existing plants. Our guide on making objections count at an EIA public hearing explains how.

Once the clearance is granted, an appeal lies to the NGT under section 16 within 30 days of the order being communicated, with up to 60 more days if there is sufficient cause. That is a short window and it runs from communication, which for the public usually means publication of the clearance. Missing it limits you to complaints about breach of conditions later, which is a weaker position.

Can we get compensation for crops, health or property?

Yes, under section 15 of the NGT Act, which covers relief and compensation to victims of pollution, restitution of damaged property and restitution of the environment. The claim must be made within 5 years of the date the cause of action first arose, with up to 60 more days for sufficient cause. Section 18 lets the injured person, the owner of damaged property, or a representative body apply, so a farmers' group or panchayat can claim for many members together.

Losses must be shown, not assumed. Keep revenue crop records, mandi receipts, photographs of damaged crops, veterinary records and doctors' prescriptions. Court fee is 1% of the compensation claimed, subject to a minimum of ₹1,000, so an inflated figure costs money and credibility.

The tribunal often does not fix individual amounts itself. It may direct the plant to deposit an interim sum with the DM and have the district administration assess individual claims. Our guide on claiming or challenging environmental compensation covers how those figures are worked out. For legal help with a claim, see our page on compensation for pollution damage.

We run a power plant or captive plant. Where do operators usually get caught?

Not on the stack, mostly. Continuous emission monitoring makes stack breaches visible and most plants manage them. The trouble comes from the edges: ash transport contractors, dry dykes in summer, coal yard dust, ash pond overflow in the monsoon, and compliance reports that say more than the site supports. Captive power plants at steel, aluminium and cement units carry the same duties.

The commonest avoidable problem is the transport contract. A plant hands ash to a contractor, records it as utilised, and never checks where the trucks go. When ash turns up on a farmer's field, the plant answers the board. Tracking ash to an actual end use, with records from the user, protects it.

If a show-cause notice or an environmental compensation demand arrives, reply within time, on facts, with documents, and ask for a hearing. Our pages on replying to a pollution board notice and defending an NGT case against your industry deal with that side.

Before you file anything against a power plant

Related guides for coal and power plant problems

Villages in the big coal belts face these problems most. If you are in one of them, our pages for environmental cases in Singrauli and environmental cases in Korba cover the local picture and the bench that hears those cases.

If an accident rather than everyday pollution is the problem, read our guide on chemical leaks and industrial accidents. And if you are ready to go to the tribunal, see filing a case in the NGT.