Parrikar threatens river disilting if sand extraction not allowed
GOANEWS DESK, PANAJI | 15 October 2013 21:08 IST
Chief minister Manohar Parrikar today threatened to disilt all the Goan rivers and sell the sand as silt if the National Green Tribunal does not grant relief to Goa to extract sand from the three identified rivers.
He also made it clear to the Assembly that neither police nor the RTO would take any action against any sand-carrying vehicle unless the mines department official accompanies them.
The state government is planning to request the NGT at its November hearing to exempt Goa from sand extraction ban since Goan sand it extracted manually from flowing rivers.
Parrikar said the NGT had banned sand extraction across the nation due to large-scale mechanized sand mining in other states with heavy machinery on dry river beds.
“Goa extracts sand manually from the flowing rivers, where it gets accumulated near the river mouths”, he said.
He informed the House that the North Goa district committee headed by the collector had identified certain zones in rivers Mandovi, Zuari, Terekhol and Chapora, where sand extraction could be permitted.
The committees were formed based on a directive issued by Ministry of Environment and Forests, he added, after the previous Congress government in Goa had stopped sand mining in 2011.
Replying to BJP legislator Pramod Sawant’s calling attention motion, Parrikar also informed that extraction of minor minerals like laterite stones etc would be permitted after seeking environment clearance.
The real hurdle, he said, however is the SEIAA, which has not cleared constitution of new committee to give these clearances.
According to him, the SEIAA has sent the file back seven times, every time with a fresh query, thus delaying constitution of the committee.
“If the file comes back now without approving the committee, I will go ahead and notify the committee to grant clearances for stone quarries”, warned Parrikar.
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