The State-level Environmental Impact Assessment Authority (SEIAA) has sparked a controversy by sanctioning the all-important environmental clearance to Ramky to go ahead with their nearly Rs 700cr Integrated Solid Waste Management project at Jawaharnagar garbage dump yard despite vehement opposition from locals and environmentalists.
A public hearing was conducted earlier this year on March 29 where a large number of residents, farmers and environmentalists demanded that the garbage dump yard be relocated. Sources said the environmental clearance was given amidst a series of stringent conditions such as: the executing agency shall supply free-of-cost potable drinking water to residents of all villages where groundwater was polluted; that the project should be executed as per Supreme Court guidelines; the executing agency should provide medical services to all its employees and this expenditure should be borne by the company. Also, a compound wall should be constructed all around the dump yard; a green belt developed by capping the present mounds of garbage, and that action would be taken against the firm if any of the terms were violated. Additionally, the age-ncy would have to submit status of the project to the SEIAA once in six months.
Despite these rules, environment protection society president D. Ravinder was unimpressed. “Over 90 per cent of people had demanded the relocation of the dump yard. Ramky has ruined the area with unscientific methods of treating garbage. The water here now is neither fit for drinking nor for cultivation. The stench from the burying of carcasses has made this belt a living hell,” he said.
He added that public hearings for such crucial projects should be conducted well before work commenced and not after most of the project was well under way, as was the case with Ramky.