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Dredging
Natural highways
@soulmoksha Issue Date: Nov 15, 2012
Mukhtar Islam and his crew of 21 have just completed a historic journey from Kolkata to Allahabad in 45 days. They were steering two tugboats, each pulling a barge carrying turbines. In 50 years, no big ship has sailed up the Ganga. By road it would have taken the crew two days to reach Allahabad and by train, less than 36 hours. The turbines, weighing 0.3 million tonnes, could not be transported by road or train because of their size.
Right of way
Issue Date: May 15, 2009
Olive Ridley turtles missed their annual nesting trip to the Orissa coast last year. Conservation groups blamed the upcoming port at Dhamra. The turtles are back this year, and port proponents Tata and L&T claim vindication. They overlook the violations that have allowed the port at Dhamra in the first place
Deep waters
Issue Date: May 15, 2007
By Arnab Pratim Dutta and Sujit Kumar Singh
Nowhere to nest
Issue Date: Apr 15, 2011
On February 26, as night fell on the tranquil Gahirmatha beach in Odisha, thousands of Olive Ridley turtles crawled in. Using their rear flippers, they dug pits in the soft beach sand and started laying eggs, more than 100 at a time. Then they skilfully covered the nests with sand and zigzagged their way back to the ocean as if to confuse predators about the exact location of the nests.
Attack from all sides
In February 2011, Tata filed a defamation suit against Greenpeace International for uploading an online game on its site, Turtle vs Tata. The Delhi High Court rejected the suit while upholding the right to free speech.Notice to Mundra for flouting laws
Issue Date: Dec 27, 2010
The Union environment ministry on December 15 issued a show cause notice to the Adani group promoted Mundra SEZ and Port in Gujarat. The ministry has asked the company to reply within 15 days as to why the clearances given to it for developing the port and a township should not be cancelled for environmental and coastal destruction. The ministry has charged the company with destruction of mangroves, reclamation of land and filling up of creeks without obtaining the mandatory clearance under the Coastal Regulation Zone (CRZ) notification of 1991.
POSCO’s port halt
Issue Date: Dec 31, 2010
The POSCO steel plant and port planned in Odisha’s Jagatsinghpur district have run into fresh trouble. An expert appraisal committee (EAC) of the Union Ministry of Environment and Forests deferred its decision on clearing the port project, saying the South Korean steel giant did not furnish sufficient details.
Push for sand mining
Issue Date: Nov 30, 2010
Sand dredgers will soon be back in business along the Bankot creek bordering coastal Raigad and Ratnagiri districts in Maharashtra. They had been silent for over a month after the Bombay High Court banned sand mining in the state on September 24, after people who mine sand manually filed a petition. “A month ago, it was impossible to stand near the dredging site because of the noise,” said Anis Jalal, president of Sagar Shramik Haat Pati Vaalu Utpadak Sahakari Sanstha, a union of manual excavators. A new policy of the state okays mechanical dredging.
For minimum impact
Regulate sand extraction by involving state pollution control boards, NGOs and citizens Conduct environmental audit of riverine and estuarine ecosystems to analyse impact of dredging Estimate optimum rate at which sand can be mined Seive at site so that rejected part can be replaced in the river bed Use construction debris to make artificial sandMundra SEZ skirts rules
Issue Date: Nov 15, 2010
CONSTRUCTION activities at Mundra special economic zone (SEZ) in Gujarat’s Kachchh district had begun even before the project’s public hearing, the procedural step towards environmental clearance for a project where affected people give their verdict. More than 1,000 hectares (ha) of mangrove have been destroyed by the Mundra SEZ, which is one of India’s largest SEZs.
