PANJIM | Feb 02, 2016: The District Collector is now the statutory authority to grant prior environmental clearance (EC) to undertake sand mining or mining of any minor minerals in the State. The powers to grant ECs for such minerals was earlier vested with the State Environment Impact Assessment Authority (SEIAA).

In a fresh order, the Union Ministry for Environment and Forests (MoEF) has constituted the District Level Environment Impact Assessment Authority (DEIAA) headed by the District Collectors of each district (North and South for Goa) for grant of EC for ‘B2’ category projects for mining of minor minerals. The DEIAA is constituted under section 3 of the Environment (Protection) Act 1986.

The ministry pointed out that the National Green Tribunal, vide its order dated January 13, 2015 has directed MoEF to draft a policy on environmental clearance for mining leases in cluster for minor minerals.

“Several State governments have represented for streamlining the process of environmental clearance for mining of minor mineral,” it said.

“Accordingly, the Ministry in consultation with State Governments has prepared guidelines on Sustainable Sand Mining detailing the provisions on environmental clearance for cluster, creation of District Environment Impact Assessment Authority and proper monitoring of sand mining using information technology and IT enabled services to track the mined material from source of destination,” the Ministry added.

DEIAA will be assisted by the 11-member District Level Expert Appraisal Committee (DEAC), with the senior most executive engineer of Irrigation Department its chairman. The committee will screen, scope and appraise the project applications. It has to also draft a District Survey Report for sand mining and mining of other minor minerals.

The SEIAA has already granted ECs to the district Collector permitting manual sand extraction at 24 clusters (riverine and estuarine) in the State. The EC has been granted for a period of five years. However, the Collector is yet to permit the applicants to extract sand. It has so far not applied for Consent to Operate before the Goa State Pollution Control Board (GSPCB), which is mandatory.

The government has fixed an annual cap of 1400 cubic metres of sand extraction per permit, placing a complete ban on extraction activities post 6.00pm.

(Source: http://www.heraldgoa.in/)