ABOUT THE PROJECT
The Mopa International Airport
was proposed in 1997 citing the ‘saturation’ of the existing Dabolim airport which also doubles up as a Navy base
Dabolim was intended to serve four million passengers annually, while the existing passenger traffic is about 7.5 million annually
The existing airport at The proposed greenfield
rily because the Supreme Court found that the Goa government had failed to provide complete information on the existence of reserved forests including those which fall within a 15-km radius of the proposed airport at Mopa. The SC had highlighted deficiencies in the data provided, including information on preservation of forests, existence of environmentally sensitive areas and impact of the proposed project on natural water channels.
Following the stay in March 2019, the Goa government sent to the environment ministry fresh information which revealed the presence of seven reserved forests within 15km of the proposed
airport, six proposed reserved forests in Goa and 29 proposed reserve forests in the Maharashtra region. Besides this, the report mentioned the presence of four rivers in Goa and one in Maharashtra as also the fact that the Western Ghat Mountain range falls within the study area.
Accordingly, the EAC once again recommended the grant of an environmental clearance (EC) to the project, with additional environmental safeguards and conditions. “The evaluation of merits is a matter which primarily rests with an expert authority. The court can certainly supervise procedural compliance and ensure that all inputs which are required to be factored into the decision-making process have been duly borne in mind. Once this has been done, the court must be circumspect in micromanaging the decision-making process by the EAC by substituting its own opinion for that of the EAC,” the Supreme Court said.
Goa chief minister Pramod Sawant welcomed the SC decision. Mopa airport will open new avenues for Goa and propel the state’s economic growth. The government is committed towards sustainable development that prioritizes its people and environment,” Sawant said.
“We are of course disappointed with the order but we will continue to fight against it in the remaining available avenues. Ideally, the EIA should have been conducted afresh. We believe that this project is antipeople and anti-development and have been able to prove that the EIA study is flawed and was a product of government policy which itself is anti-people and against the environment,” Abhijit Prabhudesai, who has been at the forefront of the environmental movement against the project, said.