PANAJI
With its term ending on November 24 last year, there is no Environment Impact Assessment Authority (EIAA) in place, a crucial statutory body without whose green nod licensing of several economic activities is not possible, sand mining being one such.
Efforts by the State's mining department to re-start legal sand mining, the closure of which has hit the supply of the crucial raw material for the construction industry, have hit a roadblock with no EIAA in place.
Recently, the mining department completed groundwork to restart legal mining of sand from three rivers -- Mandovi, Zuari and Chapora -- and the respective District Collectors opened the District Survey Report (DSR) for public suggestions and objections. The DSR is a crucial milestone in the process for granting sand extraction licences in rivers and for the Chapora it has already been finalised.
However, the DSR has hit a roadblock in taking the process further as it discovered that the EIAA, which issues the environmental clearance certificates for legal sand mining does not currently exist when its officials sought to get the ECs through the Central Government's 'Parivesh' online portal.
Legal extraction of sand from rivers in Goa had come to a standstill several years ago following intermittent interventions from the courts due to the absence of a firm policy or scientific regime to grant extraction licences.
The courts had banned the activity over concerns of environmental destruction of riverine ecosystems, particularly erosion of the banks of several rivers like Tiracol in some parts of Pernem, Chapora in Siolim and other contiguous areas of Bardez and also in Colvale and Amona.
Nonetheless, extraction and trade continues to happen clandestinely even as prices of the crucial raw material in construction have skyrocketed. Much of Goa's sand now comes from neighbouring Maharashtra and Karnataka.
With the Bombay High Court mandated legal and scientific process for grant of licences already set in motion the construction industry was hopeful that the issue would be permanently resolved which will now have to wait for some more time, up until the Centre reconstitutes the EIAA and notifies it.
