The Expert Appraisal Committee (EAC) of the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC) has reached a conclusion that the prima facie requirement of prior Environmental Clearance (EC) is not applicable for the Rayalaseema Lift Irrigation Project (RLIP).
K. Gopakumar and other EAC members, at a recent meeting, observed after detailed deliberations on the ECs granted to the Telugu Ganga Project, Srisailam Right Bank Canal and Galeru Nagari Sujala Sravanthi projects that the RLIP was not a new one and it did not fall under any category listed in the Schedule of Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) Notification of 2006.
‘No power generation’
The EAC stated that the RLIP had also no power generation component involved and it did not qualify as an expansion / modernisation project either, official sources said.
Besides, the committee said that the EC letters of the above three schemes to which RLIP would be feeding water were taken by the Government of Andhra Pradesh.
A review of the EC conditions contained in the letters revealed that changing from gravity discharge to pumping should not be considered as a change in scope as the ECs issued to these schemes did not restrict them to gravity discharge only.
Another factor is that since there is no change in the cultivable command area, the RLIP does not qualify to be covered by the aforementioned EIA notification.
The EAC concluded that as long as A.P. was restricted to drawing its allocated share of water, environmental impact of the availability of water on other users was not envisaged.
Further, A.P. shall install pumps capable of pumping only 3 tmcft (excluding safety margins) to ensure that it drew only that much quantity of water per day, the committee reported.
