NEW DELHI, FEB 16
The Environment and Forests Ministry on Wednesday lifted the moratorium on environment clearance on new projects and expansions in eight more critically polluted industrial towns, in addition to five others cleared on October 26.
The moratorium was clamped on January 13 last year on 43 industrial clusters to force remedial and mitigation efforts by State Governments and industry.
The industrial towns on which the moratorium is off, on the recommendation of the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB), with effect from February 15 are Navi Mumbai, Dombivali and Aurangabad in Maharashtra, Bhavnagar in Gujarat, Agra and Varanasi-Mirzapur in Uttar Pradesh, Ludhiana in Punjab and Cuddalore in Tamil Nadu.
Tarapur in Maharashtra, Vapi in Gujarat and Patancheru-Bollarum in Andhra Pradesh were among five areas from which the moratorium was withdrawn in October.
A ministry press note said verification of action plans of another 25 critically polluted areas is expected to be completed in another three-four weeks, while the ministry is yet to receive the revised action plans are Jodhpur, Bhiwadi and Pali in Rajasthan, Korba in Chhattisgarh and Delhi’s most polluted Naqjafgarh drain basin that includes Anand Parbat, Naraina, Okhla and Wazirpur that are all industrial areas.
The CPCB had carried out a comprehensive environment assessment of 88 important industrial clusters in the country in 2009 at the instance of the ministry and found 43 of them “critically polluted” where the CEPI (comprehensive environmental pollution index) score was as high as 70 or more.
While imposing a moratorium in these areas on starting any new industry or expanding existing one, the ministry had said it would remain in place until the State Government prepares an action plan to deal with pollution, revises it as per CPCB review and the central and state control boards certify in writing that the process of implementation of the revised action plans has indeed begun and implementation is being monitored systematically.
MP RIVER PROJECTS: The Ministry also released the conditional clearance granted to the major Omkareshwar and Indira Sagar irrigation and power projects on the Narmada in Madhya Pradesh with 18 conditions to be met as the projects progress.
The clearance was given by an extraordinary meeting of the 10-member Expert Appraisal Committee (EAC) for River Valley and Hydroelectric Projects headed by Rakesh Nath on the basis of the final assessment of the projects’ command area development (CAD) plans done by Dr Debender Pandey committee which had also made assessments of the Sardar Sarovar Project in the river.
The EAC felt the CAD plan cannot be prepared for the whole command area in one go and hence the macro-level plans can be prepared providing the schedule and their implementation is imperative to prevent any large-scale water logging as noted by the Pandey Committee in case of the Sardar Sarovar Project in Gujarat.
The conditions imposed are: Phase-wise construction schedule, year-wise plan for providing irrigation, environment action plan to address issues like health impact, ground water table rise, pollution, impact on aqua culture and contamination of natural streams, availability of electric supply to energise farmers’ wells for ground water extraction, and plan for support to farmers for pumping for conjunctive use of water.
