the goan I network
PANAJI
In a development which is bound to raise the hackles of Goa’s greens, the Environment Ministry’s expert appraisal committee (EAC) has approved Environmental Clearance for the greenfield international airport exactly three weeks after the Supreme Court had cancelled the previously granted one and asked it to revisit the process.
The EAC approved the EC to the controversial project at its meeting held on April 23, according to the minutes of its meeting uploaded by the ministry on its website.
A bench of the Supreme Court led by DY Chandrachud had cancelled the EC granted in 2016 to the Concessionaire GMR Goa International Airport Limited, for establishing the greenfield international airport at the Mopa airport.
In its order, however, the Supreme Court also directed that the EAC revisit the entire process of granting EC.
The ruling had come after a body of greens -- Federation of Rainbow Warriors and a resident of the area where the Mopa airport is planned to come up -- had approached the court citing numerous deficiencies in environmental assessments.
The petitioners had also brought on record non-compliance of conditions imposed when EC was granted including large-scale felling of trees up to 50,000-plus in number without any of the mandatory permissions from the forest department. The Supreme Court had during the course of its hearings brought on record that details of the natural features of the site as well as ecological facts had been ignored in the environment impact assessment (EIA) report submitted by the State government to obtain the EC.
Among other issues the Supreme Court said the EIA also did not capture the fact that the Western Ghats and eco-sensitive zones therein are within 10-kilometre radius of the project.
Meanwhile, the EAC has found reserve forests are situated within a 15-kilometre buffer zone from the location of the airport project. It also recorded the existence of wetlands and four rivers in the area.
All this information was ignored in the original EIA report which formed the basis for the grant of the EC originally in 2016.
Meanwhile, the lawyer for the petitioners -- Rainbow Warriors and Hanuman Aroskar -- has claimed that the project’s proponents concealed these facts.
Ritwick Dutta, an environmental lawyer who represented Aroskar and Rainbow Warriors said from the EAC’s April 23 meeting minutes it was clear that the project
proponents did not disclose that the site is very close to a reserve forests and wetlands.
“They said 55,000 trees may have to be felled only after they received the environmental clearance. This time I think the project should be assessed after a fresh study. There is no study of impact,” Dutta was quoted by a national media organisation as saying.
Initially, Mopa’s EC was challenged before the National Green Tribunal (NGT) which however stopped short of quashing the crucial green nod in August 2018.
The matter of recommencing work at the Mopa airport site, however, is now expected to lie before the Supreme Court which had also asked the EAC, that if it intends to grant the EC afresh, it should consider imposing fresh conditions in keeping with international best practices pertaining to greenfield airport projects.
