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National Green Tribunal in its Order dated 25/09/2019 in the matter of Amit Upadhaya V. State Level Environmental Impact Assessment Authority & Others regarding lack of Environment Impact Assessment (EIA) for many minor mineral mining projects in the State of Uttar Pradesh.
The Tribunal clubbed two applications. The first case relates to environmental clearance (EC) granted to 12 minor mineral-sand/morrum mining projects on the Rivers Betwa and Ken without Environment Impact Assessment. In the second case, a Regional Environmental Impact Assessment (REIA) for five rivers over which sand mining projects exist, was prepared by the environmental consultant in the process of which several critical documents required as per Form 1 were not uploaded. The respondent, however, went ahead in processing the project and public hearings invited by the State Pollution Control Board (SPCB) although no Term of Reference (TOR) had been issued and notified. Several public hearings actually did not take place and, the cases where public hearing was conducted were based on false statements. The specific objections raised by the District Mining Officer, Banda, with regard to non-availability of the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) Reports or the Term of Reference (TOR) had been ignored.
The National Green Tribunal in its Order said that “Rapid Environmental Impact Assessment (REIA) is a macro level tool which only gives representative idea of impacts in general over in a large area. It is just an indicative tool which gives a bird’s eye view of situation. Only the individual Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) or cluster based EIA can bring out individual or cluster based impacts on environment.” Moreover, such tendency of placing reliance on REIA which is a macro tool shall set a bad precedent to shadow or mask the micro level impacts which are quite significant in terms of its environmental consequences and, therefore, has a much larger need for mitigation. Reliance on such tools will give the authorities a false sense of environmental compliance whereas environmental degradation will continue at the same pace,” the order added.
The Tribunal said it was wrong on the part of the State Environmental Impact Assessment Authority (SEIAA), the state of Uttar Pradesh as well as the Ministry of Environment, Forest & Climate Change (MoEF&CC) and the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) to accept “Rapid Environmental Impact Assessment (REIA) as the cluster EIA for all the clusters by the project proponents.” The National Green Tribunal quashes the environmental Clearance (EC) granted to all the mining leases as they fail to satisfy the requirement of the EIA Notification 2006, directions issued by the Supreme Court in Deepak Kumar case, the Sustainable Sand Mining Management Guidelines, 2016 and the various Office Memorandums issued by the MoEF&CC in relation to it.
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