EIAs, Public Hearings structurally defective

Environment Impact Assessment (EIA) as well as Rapid Environment Impact Assessment (REIA) conducted by all the mining companies are defective ab initio. Firstly they are paid by the mining companies and private firms are employed to do these studies. So from the beginning itself comes the interest of mining industry. Study then gets tailored accordingly. It is packed up with false information. If it is not detected by public then it goes off as truth. Based on these reports Public Hearings under Environment Protection Act are conducted. To conduct these Public Hearings Goa State Pollution Control Board is paid Rs.5 lakh for each of the public hearings. Pollution control board then becomes the servant of the mining companies and feels it is obligatory to toe the line of the mining companies. There is plenty of evidence floating around in Goa for this. In fact each of the EIA and REIA reports is unchallengeable evidence.

The entire edifice of EIA and Public Hearings are corroded and defective. It provides undue advantage and legitimizes manipulation and distortion of information. Ecology suffers with this. Local communities suffer with this. Only mining companies and few their dependents gets high in this whole process. The planet earth gets wounded every day and demands stops to all this nonsense.

Sebastian Rodrigues