Recovery a must for mining without permission in Goa

The following blog are excerpts from newspapers:

The Goa state pollution control board (GSPCB) has suspended the operation of 35 mines operating in Goa for not complying with the National Environmental Engineering Research Institute (NEERI) conditions. It has also rejected the applications of two for water and air consent to operate the mines.

According to the Goa State Pollution Control Board (GSPCB) chairman Simon D'Souza, the mines were functional without adequate permission under the Air and Water Pollution Control Act. He said, "They will be allowed to resume operations only after they get the consent under the act. More mines are likely to be shut down in the near future."
D'Souza also added that there are many others mines which were functioning without the mandatory pollution-related permissions. Goa had managed to export a whopping 54 million tonnes of low-grade iron ore to countries like China, Japan and Romania in the last financial year. This happened even as green activists complained that there has been large scale destruction of green cover to pave way for "indiscriminate and illegal mining".

The BJP had earlier accused several Goa Cabinet ministers of being involved in the illegal mining trade. The Opposition BJP leader Manohar Parrikar had commented that close to 20 per cent of Goa's annual output is illegally mined.

The board after hearing out all the parties concerned has issued directions to the mines to comply with three recommendations made by NEERI in its report. The mining companies have partially complied with the directions. The mining companies were directed to bio remediate (process that uses micro-organisms or their enzymes to return the environment altered by contaminants to its original condition) the fields and compliance can be ascertained only after the monsoon.

The NEERI report recommended that the proper slope stabilization be carried out in the mining areas to minimize runoff of the overburdened dump material to the nearby agricultural fields. It also recommended the Integrated Biotechnological Approach (IBA) as a mitigation measure for restoring the soil quality of the silt affected area in the report.

The irony of it all is that even though the mines have been operational without the requisite permissions for over two years, there have been no punitive measures for the mining done and ore exported during this period.

In other words, what ever mining was done over the last two years was a crime. The State must enforce some recovery of dues from the mines for carrying out mining in this period.