Validity, Post-Clearance Monitoring and Transferability
Chapter One Hundred Fifty-Nine
Syllabus topic 6, "Emerging Legal Controls"
Pages 760 to 768 of 913
In one line
A clearance now lasts ten years for most projects, thirteen for a river valley project, fifteen for a nuclear project and the approved mining plan's life, up to thirty years, for a mine, and it lives on half-yearly compliance reports that are public documents.
In the wording a student can write in an examination: paragraph 9 of the Environmental Impact Assessment Notification 2006, as substituted by S.O. 1807(E) of 12 April 2022, defines the validity of an environmental clearance as the period from its grant to the start of production operations, or the completion of all construction operations in the case of construction projects, counted for a mine from the execution of the mining lease, and fixes it at thirteen years for river valley projects, fifteen years for nuclear power projects and the processing of nuclear fuel, ten years for all other projects, and for mining projects the project life laid down in the approved mining plan subject to a maximum of thirty years; paragraph 10 requires the clearance to be publicised and half-yearly compliance reports to be filed in soft copy, and makes those reports public documents; and paragraph 11 permits the transfer of a clearance during its validity on the same terms and conditions and for the same validity period.
Validity
What the period measures. From the grant of the clearance, or from the date on which it may be presumed to have been granted under paragraph 8(iii), to the start of production operations, or in the case of construction projects under item 8, to the completion of all construction operations. For mining projects a proviso added in 2022 counts the validity from the date of execution of the mining lease.
That is the point most often misstated. The validity is not the life of the project's permission to pollute. It is the period within which the project must start. Once production begins, the clearance is not spent; the conditions run and the compliance reporting continues.
The periods, as they have stood since 12 April 2022.
| Project | Validity | Extension on an application within validity |
|---|---|---|
| River valley projects, item 1(c) | thirteen years | up to two years |
| Nuclear power projects and the processing of nuclear fuel, item 1(e) | fifteen years | up to five years |
| Mining projects | the project life laid down in the approved mining plan, as renewed, subject to a maximum of thirty years, whichever is earlier | a further twenty years beyond thirty, the committee examining the adequacy of the safeguards every five years, until the lease expires, the mine's life ends or fifty years pass, whichever is earlier |
| All other projects and activities | ten years | up to one year |
| Area development projects and townships, item 8(b) | ten years, limited only to such activities as are the responsibility of the applicant as a developer | up to one year |
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