Ministry eases green norms for coal mine expansion

April 20, 2010 02:11 IST Tags: Coal India, Environment Impact Assessment, Environmental Impact Assessment Authority, Ministry of Environment, Business Standard

Coal mine developers may be exempted from public hearings for obtaining clearance for expansion. There is good news for coal mine developers who want to go in for expansion. The Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF), in its new notification, said the developers that had already bagged environment clearance for their existing projects might be exempted from the stipulated public hearings for obtaining clearances for their expansion projects, provided they met certain criteria specified by the ministry. This is going to benefit state-run Coal India [ Images ] and its subsidiaries as well as private mining companies. The ministry, in its notification which has been uploaded on its website, says the developers that have bagged green clearance for their existing coal mining projects under the Environment Impact Assessment (EIA) notification of 2006 would be eligible for this exemption. However, the projects cleared under the 1994 version of the EIA notification would have to conduct fresh public hearings for each of their expansion projects. The EIA notification, 2006, was amended on December 1, 2009. According to this amendment, coal mining projects with lease area of more than 150 hectares have been put into category 'A' and those between five hectares and 150 hectares are category 'B' projects requiring clearance from MoEF and the State level Environmental Impact Assessment Authority, respectively. An expansion project, which has obtained prior environment clearance under the EIA notification of 2006 at least once and has undergone public hearing at least once, would be exempted from public hearing. Exemption may be given once in five years for an expansion project. Further, an expansion project, with prior environment clearance and having conducted at least one public hearing, can be considered for exempting from holding public hearings if there is no additional lease/project area, manpower, equipment, road transportation, rehabilitation and resettlement involved with the expansion project. Exemption from holding public hearing would also be considered if there is no additional requirement of water or the additional requirement is met by recycling or rainwater harvesting and the levels of environmental quality parameters are within the prescribed limit. "This is a major relief for Coal India and private coal mining companies. Coal India, in particular, has been consistently arguing its case for expediting environment and forest clearances. Coal India had petitioned that average pendency at state level for Stage-I clearance is more than four years and that for Stage-II clearance is more than 2.5 years. Similarly, average pendency at the level of MoEF for Stage-I clearance is more than one year and that for Stage-II clearance is about 2.5 years," industry sources told Business Standard.

About 62,000 hectares are likely to be acquired by Coal India for projects under implementation and also for those identified during the Eleventh Five-Year Plan (2007-12). During the first two years of the 11th plan, 3,293 hectares have been acquired. During the Plan period, 134 new projects have been identified with a capacity of 367.86 million tonnes. These projects are expected to contribute about 102.45 million tonnes during 2011-12, the terminal year of Plan.