SC allows Adani Cementation to cut 158 mangrove trees for captive jetty project along Amba river

The Supreme Court on Monday upheld the Bombay High Court’s order that allowed Adani Cementation to cut 158 mangrove trees for construction of a captive jetty project along the Amba river in Maharashtra’s Raigad district.

The jetty construction project, which allegedly fell within 1.26 hectares of Coastal Regulation Zone regulations-IA area (being mangrove forest and mangrove buffer zone area), will help Adani transport cement, clinker and other raw material through waterways along with a conveyor corridor and an approach road to the proposed cement grinding and fly ash processing unit, a back up storage unit in Shahapur and Shahabaz in Raigad district to meet the increasing demand for cement in the Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR).

A bench led by Chief Justice B.R. Gavai dismissed a petition by the Bombay Environmental Action Group, an NGO, alleging that the HC failed to appreciate that mangroves and mangrove buffer zones were ecologically sensitive and geomorphological features which play a role in maintaining the integrity of the coast and their destruction would threaten Maharashtra’s fragile coastal environment.

The HC judgment “fundamentally erred in prioritizing the commercial interests of a private entity over the paramount ecological importance of mangroves,” the NGO said.

Considering the large demand of cement in the coastal areas and seeing the current congestion of roads in MMR, Adani said that it had conceptualised setting up of cement manufacturing unit along Amba River, with an intention to reduce the carbon footprint and to help reduce the overall pollution and also accelerate the infrastructure development in Mumbai, and hence it was in larger public interest.

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The HC had on March 5 allowed the project “keeping in mind the goal of sustainable development of striking a balance between the necessity of the project, which aims at meeting the every increasing need of cement.” The HC found no difficulty in granting the requisite permission to Adani as the requisite statutory permissions were granted in favour of the project, subject to strict compliance of the conditions imposed upon it by various statutory authorities for ensuring protection of ecology and environment.



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