PANJIM: In what could shatter the State government’s plan to resume iron ore activities by allowing handling of dumps, Union Ministry for Environment and Forest (MoEF) has made prior Environment Clearance (EC) mandatory for dump mining.

In an office memorandum (OM) issued on June 18, the Union Ministry said that mining projects, including dump mining, overburden mining, etc, do require a prior EC as per the provisions of Environment Impact Assessment (EIA) notification, 2006.

“Therefore it is clarified that as per the provisions of the EIA notification, 2006, the mining projects stated above require prior EC irrespective of the size of the mine lease area and type of mineral including over burden and dump mining,” MoEF adviser Surendra Kumar said. 

The Supreme Court’s Expert Committee has recommended allowing handling of dumps, however, the report is yet to be considered by the Court.

The State Government had in 2013 introduced a policy to regulate dumps of rejected iron ore, by charging a certain fee on the amount of land on which these have piled up for over two decades.

Government had levied a fee of Rs 120 per square metre of land occupied by the rejected iron ore dumps in private areas and Rs 220 per square metre for those on revenue land. Over Rs 370 crore were collected under the process.