A day after Minister of State for Civil Aviation Praful Patel publicly charged the Environment Ministry with delaying environmental clearance to the Navi Mumbai airport project, Minister of State for Environment and Forests (MoE&F) Jairam Ramesh on Saturday blamed it on the State agencies under the Maharashtra government.
Asserting that the matter was not pending before his Ministry, Mr. Ramesh, in a letter to Mr. Patel, said: “Let me clarify that the matter is not pending with my Ministry. I fully understand the need for a new airport for Mumbai, but, at the same time, I hope you will appreciate that the present proposal has substantial environmental impacts especially in the coastal area. These include loss of 300 acres of mangroves, diversion of two rivers, levelling of an 80 metre high hill and significant coastal zone management issues.”
Reeling out facts to put across his point, Mr. Ramesh said the MoE&F first received the proposal for developing a green field airport on August 27, 2007. The final amendment of CRZ notification 1991 making airports a permissible activity in Navi Mumbai was issued on May 15, 2009. The City and Industrial Development Corporation of Maharashtra (CIDCO) submitted the proposal for the new airport on June 22, 2009. The Terms of Reference (TOR) for conducting the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) study were issued by the Ministry on August 4, 2009.
The letter said that considering the substantial environmental and coastal impacts that the new airport is likely to have, the Environmental Appraisal Committee of the Ministry undertook a site visit on December 23, 2009. This visit could not take place earlier because of the general elections and monsoon. Based on this visit, additional TOR for the environmental impact assessment was issued by the Ministry on February 8, 2010.
On June 7, 2010, the Ministry received from the Maharashtra Pollution Control Board the report on the proceedings of the public hearings on the Navi Mumbai airport and a draft EIA report.
On June 22, the Ministry wrote to the Maharasthra Coastal Zone Management Authority (MCZMA) asking for its recommendations on the new airport. This letter was endorsed to CIDCO as well with the request that the final EIA report be submitted to the MCZMA to enable examination. “The Ministry needs to receive the final Environment Impact Assessment (EIA) from the CIDCO and the final recommendations of the MCZMA.”
