{"id":30504,"date":"2018-10-26T16:31:01","date_gmt":"2018-10-26T11:01:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.forumias.com\/?p=30504"},"modified":"2018-10-26T16:31:01","modified_gmt":"2018-10-26T11:01:01","slug":"bending-the-rules-on-nod-for-neutrino-project","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/bending-the-rules-on-nod-for-neutrino-project\/","title":{"rendered":"Bending the rules \u2014 on nod for Neutrino project"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.thehindu.com\/opinion\/editorial\/bending-the-rules\/article23295782.ece\"><strong>Bending the rules \u2014 on nod for Neutrino project<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n<p><strong>Context<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>A year after the National Green Tribunal suspended\u00a0the environmental clearance granted to the India-based Neutrino Observatory (INO), the Expert Appraisal Committee (Infra 2) of the Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change has overturned the NGT verdict and\u00a0granted environmental clearance\u00a0for the project<\/p>\n<p><strong>Location of the observatory<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Bodi West Hills in Theni district, Tamil Nadu<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The laboratory cavern will be located 1,300 metres underground, with an access tunnel. The rock cover is necessary to minimise the naturally occurring cosmic ray backdrop<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Why the project has become controversial?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The project has become controversial on environmental grounds, given the proposed site\u2019s proximity to the <strong>Mathikettan Shola National Park<\/strong> in Kerala\u2019s Western Ghats, a global biodiversity hotspot<\/p>\n<p><strong>Has the final consent been given?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>No. Considering the project\u2019s national importance, the Environment Ministry had taken up the proposal for clearance as a \u201cspecial case\u201d. The green signal is conditional on getting the consent of the Tamil Nadu Pollution Control Board and the National Board for Wildlife<\/p>\n<p><strong>Flaws in the clearance process<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Approved under wrong category<\/strong>: The project has been approved under <strong>category B item 8(a)<\/strong> \u2014 <u>building and construction projects<\/u> \u2014 of the Schedule to the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) Notification, 2006. But it should have been treated <strong>as category A<\/strong> as the project lies just 4.9 km from the national park in Idukki district of Kerala<\/li>\n<li>The NGT had ruled that it was indeed a category A project and the\u00a0Tamil Nadu\u00a0State expert appraisal committee also noted that it could not be appraised under category B 8(a) as <strong>tunneling and other activities<\/strong> went beyond the scope of the section<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Provision as per the EIA notification<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>According to the 2006 notification, projects or activities that come under category A require \u201cprior environmental clearance\u201d from the Environment Ministry. Side-stepping the EIA requirement on technical grounds both by the project proponents and the Ministry is surely not the ideal way to go about such matters<\/li>\n<li>For one, the EIA was done by the Salim Ali Centre for Ornithology and Natural History, which is an \u201cunaccredited agency\u201d. And though a public consultation with local people who have a \u201cplausible stake\u201d in the project was conducted in July 2010, the details of the meeting were submitted only by the end of February 2018<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Conclusion<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The importance of the project notwithstanding, treating it as a special case and bypassing the environmental clearance protocol sets a wrong precedent.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Bending the rules \u2014 on nod for Neutrino project Context A year after the National Green Tribunal suspended\u00a0the environmental clearance granted to the India-based Neutrino Observatory (INO), the Expert Appraisal Committee (Infra 2) of the Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change has overturned the NGT verdict and\u00a0granted environmental clearance\u00a0for the project Location of the&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/bending-the-rules-on-nod-for-neutrino-project\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Bending the rules \u2014 on nod for Neutrino project<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":61,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[555],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-30504","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-test-1","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","views":{"total":0,"cached_at":"","cached_date":1704767970},"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30504","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/61"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30504"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30504\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30504"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30504"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30504"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}