EIA process to be made more transparent

Companies and authorities will have to subject their projects to harsher reviews by the public while seeking Environment Impact Assessment (EIA) in the future as the Centre is planning to modify the present procedure.

This will come into effect after the government finalizes the proposed changes in the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) Notification 2006 - the draft of which has already been issued to various agencies - to bring the environmental clearances into public domain.

According to a press release issued by the Prime Minister’s Office, “the draft notification provides for the project proponent to compulsorily make public at their cost the terms of the environmental clearances obtained by them by advertising in two local newspapers of the district/state where the project is located,’’ the release says.
 
Besides, the copies of the EIA would also have to be made available by the sanctioning authorities to the local bodies where the project is located and the governmental agencies have to post the clearances on their web-sites, it says.

The new rules are aimed at helping “situations where the enforcement is dependent on authorities on whom citizens cannot mount any pressure in the absence of their knowledge of the provisions of the environmental clearances."

However, the notification also seeks to liberalise the EIA procedures for projects which use non-polluting technologies and help in conservation of resources and keep the biomass-based power plants (up to 50MW capacity) and prospecting of minerals from the purview of the notification.

'Further, in view of the delay being caused to expansion and modernisation projects due to several states not having constituted their EIA authorities yet, it is proposed to exempt a certain category of projects from scoping for three years,’’ it said.