The Requirement of Prior Environmental Clearance

In one line

The obligation is to obtain the clearance before the first spade goes into the ground, and everything else in this module follows from the word prior.

In the wording a student can write in an examination: paragraph 2 of the Environmental Impact Assessment Notification 2006 provides that the projects and activities listed in the Schedule shall require prior environmental clearance from the concerned regulatory authority, that is the Central Government in the Ministry of Environment and Forests for Category A and the State Environment Impact Assessment Authority for Category B, before any construction work, or preparation of land by the project management except for securing the land, is started on the project or activity.

The two limbs of paragraph 2

What is caught.

• (i) all new projects or activities listed in the Schedule;
• (ii) expansion, modernisation or any change in the product mix or raw material mix in existing projects or activities listed in the Schedule, resulting in capacity beyond the threshold limits specified for the concerned sector in the Schedule, subject to the conditions and procedure in paragraph 7(ii).

Learn the two as new, and grown or changed past the threshold. That is paragraph 2 as substituted by S.O. 980(E) of 2 March 2021. An older book will give the 2006 text, which had three limbs, the second and third being expansion and modernisation with addition of capacity beyond the sector limits and, separately, any change in product mix in an existing manufacturing unit beyond the specified range.

And the exemptions paragraph 7(ii) attaches. Under clause (b), an existing project holding a prior environmental clearance in the processing, production or manufacturing sectors, items 2 to 5 of the Schedule, that increases its production capacity, with or without a change in raw material mix, product mix or the configuration of the plant, shall be exempt from the requirement of prior environmental clearance provided that there is no increase in pollution load. The exemption applies only after the proponent files a no increase in pollution load certificate from an empanelled environmental auditor or institution on the PARIVESH portal and with the State Pollution Control Board, and installs online continuous monitoring with at least 95 per cent uptime. It does not apply if the change moves the project from Category B2 to B1 or A, and if the Board, after hearing the proponent, holds that the pollution load has increased, the exemption fails and a clearance is deemed always to have been required. Under clause (c), a change in configuration during execution, with no change in production capacity and no increase in pollution load, needs no prior clearance, on furnishing its particulars on the portal before the change is made.