The Supreme Court on Thursday lifted its suspension of an environmental clearance given for a greenfield airport at Mopa in Goa after the concessionaire, GMR Goa International Airport Limited (GGIAL), undertook to adopt a “zero carbon programme” for both constructing and operating the airport.
The purpose of a zero carbon airport operation is to eliminate anthropogenic carbon emissions reaching the atmosphere completely or to the minimum extent possible.
The court directed the National Environmental Engineering Research Institute (NEERI) to oversee the compliance of the undertaking, saying the project required the oversight of a specialised body like NEERI.
The environmental clearance (EC) was granted on October 28, 2015. On April 23 last year, the Supreme Court had found the clearance flawed and suspended it on an appeal filed by a resident of Mopa, Hanuman Laxman Aroskar. The court had asked Expert Appraisal Committee (EAC) of the union environment ministry to re-visit its EC.
Thursday’s judgment records the submissions made by senior advocate Anitha Shenoy, for Mr. Aroskar, that the EAC hardly has the domain expertise for the specialised job. Mr. Aroskar alleged the EAC chairman was a former director of the Council for Social Development and its members were retired officers from Central and State Pollution Control Boards. He alleged that the EAC minutes read like facsimile of the concessionaire’s presentation.
There are 35 proposed reserved forests around the project area and no primary data was collected as required through the Airport Guidance Manual, the judgment recorded the petitioner’s contentions.
He alleged that there was no study on the impact of the airport on the Western Ghats, which is home to the 1172 species of flora and fauna along with tiger and elephant corridors. There are 10 villages in the area and their vulnerability is not known. Mr. Aroskar said the impact of tree-felling on the 42 forests surrounding the site is unknown. He said “compensatory forestation cannot replace a natural forest”.
The union ministry had countered that the impact of the project on the eco-system was already assessed and mitigation measures proposed. “The EAC took due cognizance of the presence of forest land and also observed that though a significant number of trees were required to be felled, this was a requirement in the wake of an identified project site,” the judgment recorded the arguments of Additional Solicitor General A.N.S. Nadkarni.
The judgment recorded that 54,716 trees were felled. But Mr. Nadkarni assured that three lakh trees would be planted at the site and in nearby villages within 15 km. This would be supervised by the Biodiversity Board. Besides this, another 2.5 lakh trees would be planted and monitored by the Director General of Civil Aviation.
The judgment notes that the proposed greenfield airport would have a capacity to handle 4.4 million passengers in the first phase, followe by 13 million passengers in the second phase and 30 million assengers in the phase three annually. The project area of the proposed Mopa airport is spread over 2,131 acres. The construction of an airport at Mopa Goa has been on the drawing board for nearly two decades. As on January 2019, approximately 14.06 per cent of the project work was completed. At one point of time, approximately 1,500 workforce were gainfully engaged at the project site along with requisite plant and machinery.
