TEAM HERALD
PANJIM: “The Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) documents of the mining industry in Goa have failed to correctly and objectively state the distance of mining lease from the boundaries of the protected area, considering the fact that almost all mines in Goa are situated within 10 kms of wildlife sanctuaries and national park,” Centre for Environmental Education (CEE) said in its report released Tuesday.
“Goa is currently facing a serious environmental challenge due to unscientific and haphazard mining activities,” the report, which raps the State government and mining firms for providing faulty and deficient information on mining leases while sanctioning ECs, says.
The ECs had been sanctioned to as many as 182 mining leases and glaring irregularities have been observed during the tenure of successive governments.
However, for the period from 2000 onwards, former chief minister Digambar Kamat was the mines minister of the State.
State government in 2011 had asked CEE to carry out a comprehensive research to assess the quality of the Environmental Impact Assessments
submitted, compliance with Environment Clearance (EC) conditions and the adequacy of the Environment Management Plans with respect to 105 operational mines.
“It does not justify ignoring National Park and Wildlife Sanctuaries, falling within 10 km of the Protected Areas when Indian Board for Wildlife (IBWL) resolution of January 21, 2002 had mandated that these should be constituted as Ecologically Sensitive Areas,” the report observes.
The study also revealed mismatch between figures produced by mining firms and the government, while sanctioning the ECs to the mining leases.
“There was often also a mismatch between the distance given in the EIA document and the distance mentioned in the EC letters. As per our assessment, 30 mines have not mentioned the distance from the boundary of the WLS, while in the case of 46 mines there are discrepancies in the distances provided in the EIA documents and ECs,” the study conducted by Prof Madhav Gadgil and Sujeetkumar Dongre reads.
Despite sanctioning ECs to 182 mining leases, the total production of whose would amount to an annual removal of 70 million tonnes of ore, the EIA does not speak about the adverse effect of haphazard mining on the environment, biodiversity and human community, by large.
“ECs sanction permitted in principle removal of some 200 million tonnes of earth in the state of Goa every year. Obviously it is necessary to consider the cumulative environmental impacts of such a huge turnover of soil in an ecologically sensitive area like the Western Ghats, which has not been done,” the report adds.
“The EIAs, ECs and EMPs were found to be highly deficient in information pertaining to major environmental parameters such as land use pattern, water resources, biodiversity and demographic profile, dependency of people on agriculture, air quality and impact of air pollution on the health of local people,” the report states.
Further, the EIAs, prepared in 2003 had completely neglected the presence of Schedule Caste and Schedule Tribe communities in the areas proposed for mining. It does not justify lack of information or its falsification regarding nearness to water bodies as also false information on absence of hill streams.
The process of sanctioning ECs must be conducted with due care and not be treated as part of a process of quickly getting over the hurdle of environmental and social considerations so as to promote more and more economic activity as is happening today, CEE said.
EIA consists of improper documentation of the existence of water sources within leases and adjoining the leased boundary information relating to demographic profile, and socio–economic status, discrepancies in actual distances between the boundaries of mine leases and protected areas and lack of information on flora and fauna of the mine lease and buffer areas.
