Navi Mumbai
airport to be inspected by two members of NBWL
By Dinesh Kamath
The Ministry of Environment and
Forests (MoEF) has asked two members of the Standing Committee of National Board
for Wildlife (NBWL) to visit the Navi Mumbai international airport site and
prepare a site inspection report. This is in spite of the fact that this
airport had got environmental clearance in November 2010.
Kishore Rithe, president of
Satpuda Foundation, and Dr Asad Rahmani, director of the Bombay Natural History
Society (BNHS), are the two members who will conduct avian fauna studies for
the City and Industrial Development Corporation (CIDCO), the nodal agency for
the airport project. The proposal for wildlife clearance for the airport came owing
to the fact that the site falls within ten km of the Karnala bird sanctuary. A
Supreme Court ruling has made it mandatory for projects located within ten km
of a protected wildlife area to get NBWL approval.
Last year, Debi Goenka of
Conservation Action Trust wrote to the MoEF and the Maharashtra
forest department pointing out that the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA)
report for the airport had erred in saying that the proposed airport was 12.5
km away from Karnala bird sanctuary. Mr.Goenka said he had conducted a site
visit in 2011 with CIDCO officials and used GPS to measure the exact distance
which was at least nine km between the proposed airport and Karnala bird
sanctuary. The forest department then took up the matter and escalated it.
Mr. Goenka alleged that both
CIDCO and the Maharashtra forest department
had deliberately concealed the fact that the sanctuary was less than ten km
away from the airport site. Also other than mangroves there was additional
forest area which would be affected by the project. He said there was a special
provision in the EIA Notification, 2006 which says that deliberate concealment
and/or submission of false and misleading data which is material to screening
and scoping, shall make the application liable for rejection. He said this is a
fit case for cancelling the environmental clearance of this project. He also
pointed out that Matheran hill station which is designated as an eco sensitive
zone and Elephanta
Island fall in the
vicinity of the proposed airport.
The sanctuary attracts many birds
as also migratory duck and geese and bird-aircraft interactions cannot be ruled
out, he added.
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