Thiruvananthapuram | Nov 28, 2017: With growing need for supply of materials for government-sponsored infrastructure projects, many of the authorities have slow-pedalled actions against unauthorized quarrying in the district for the last few years.

Going by the current statistics of department of mining and geology, one quarrying permit and 60 leases are presently valid while, rural police had conducted 79 raids covering 35 police station limits during the past three days.

The number of quarrying permits in the district dropped to a single digit after environmental clearance was made mandatory for all quarrying activities irrespective of the area which is mined. What was actually meant to check attempts to endanger environment paved way for unregulated quarrying as the owners who were denied environmental clearances rode on high demand and favourable court orders to persist with quarrying.

Nedumangad taluk has the largest number of lease holders in the district; 13 followed by Neyyatinkara taluk (8) and Thiruvananthapuram taluk (4). The district is second to Ernakulam in quarrying activities. Ernakulam has a total of 80 quarrying leases and 15 quarrying permits.

"There were more than 60 quarrying permits in the district which were reduced to one in the last one year. Officially there might be one valid quarrying permit, but the activities never ceased," said a senior official with mining and geology department.

Even the district administration which has constituted a squad to earmark rock puramboke areas is trying to extract information on NOCs issued by district collector during the past one decade. In addition to various set of mandatory documents, NOC from collector is required for conducting mining in rock puramboke owned by the government.

The department of mining and geology has recently mapped the authorized quarrying areas using Kerala Online Mining Permit Awarding Services (KOMPAS), the e-Governance initiative of the department. The boundary co-ordinates gathered from mining plans are plotted on the software to draw exact boundaries of each authorized quarry functioning in the district. Satellite imaging and GPS were employed by the department to keep a tab on quarries functioning in the district.

A major number of unauthorized quarries function in areas less than 5 hectares. As per the norms District Environmental Impact Assessment Authority-DEIAA headed by collector grants EC to quarries measuring less than 5 hectares. Data on pending number of applications or applications processed are currently unavailable with the authority and according to mining officials, over 100 applications could be pending.

"While EC may or may not have been granted, there has been no co-ordinated effort to properly make sure that quarries without valid documents do not function at all. It is not just about mining and geology, officials with PCB, panchayats, explosives and environmental authorities ought to have checked the functioning of quarries," another official said.

(Source: https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/)