Report by Kahnu Nanda, Jagatsinghpur: An Environment Impact Assessment [EIA] public hearing for the JSW Utkal steel Ltd proposed steel plant and along with a captive jetty at Nuagaon village in Erasama coast was held in Gadakujanga village on Friday.
The public hearings was attended by JSW senior officials Satya Kumar Mallick, Rashmi Ranjan Patra, collector S K Mohapatra, pollution control board regional officer, Para dip Mr Ramesh Kumar Ekka, BDOs Kujanga and Erasama, revenue officials from Kujanga.
JSW officials read out companies proposed steel plant is designed to adopt most efficient cleaner and greener technologies so that there is no adverse impact on environment. State of the art technologies have been planned to adopt for controlling air, water pollution. 33% of the steel plant area will be greenery covers after planting trees and gardening, ESPs and bag filters will be installed to check dust at plant site, they revealed.
Public hearings are mandatory requirements under EIA Notification 2006 as an important step in the process to grant or reject environment clearances for industry or infrastructure projects, these hearings are critical to record the views of the locally affected people.
It is a onetime event where project authorities, affected communities, EIA consultants and environment regulators as authority of state pollution control board come face to face to voice their questions, grievances about the project’s impact and seek answers. Basing on the public hearings outcomes are considered by the MoEFs for giving project permission.
In the flip side JSW Pratirodha Sangram Samiti was opposed the public hearings, Samiti president former MLA Lalatendu Mohapatra accompanying few activists were reached hearing site and submitted a memorandum requesting to stop the project.
Sources informed that the JSW opponents were conducted a protest meeting at Patana village under Dhinkia Panchayat on Friday and decided to oppose the JSW project as like as Posco. However many residents from Noliasahi, Dhinkia, Govindapur panchayat’s were boycotted the public hearings.
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