I hesitate to call Jaintia Hills Rat hole mining: PBO Warjri meghalaya24July 2, 2014News July 2, 2014: After taking over charge as the new Chief Secretary of Meghalaya, PBO Warjri is of the view that the coal mining of Jaintia Hills is not rat hole mining. “I hesitate to call Jaintia Hills Rat hole mining,” PBO Warjri said. Giving reason for his statement, Warjri informed that people in Jaintia hills know the science of Geology and accordingly they use lot of equipment for mining. “This mining in Jaintia is not traditional science, people knows the science of Geology they knows where seam is located,” he said adding, “Whatever is going on in jaintia Hills is not traditional science, lot of equipment is used although they may not be sophisticated but still equipments are used for mining.” The statement by him comes in the wake of the National Green Tribunal (NGT)’s order ban on rat hole coal mining in the state. Elaborating his statement, Warjri said “In Jaintia Hills, they dig a big shaft to extract the coal, they dig it down until they find seam and then they dig it horizontally using various mining equipments and this method is not rat hole mining.” He also added that the traditional rat hole mining is in Sohra, East Khasi hills district where they dug straight through the hill without any modern equipment. The National Green Tribunal (NGT) in its interim order on April 17 banned rate hole mining in the state of Meghalaya. Following the interim order issued by NGT on April 17, coal mining was halt in entire state of Meghalaya. The NGT ban came following the All Dimasa Students’ Union, Dima Hasao District Committee, while moving the Tribunal over the severe ill- effects of rat-hole coal mining in Meghalaya, mentioned how the Kopili river was getting increasingly polluted by the illegal mining, posing a grave health hazard to people and animals besides adversely impacting agriculture. He however, admitted that coal mining had an adverse impact on water bodies. “If you go to many of the river bodies located in the coal mining area you will find the colour of rock has changed to red this is because of the high sulphur contend in the coal that gets reacts with water which is H20 and becomes sulphuric acid H2SO4,” the Chief Secretary said. Holding the mine owner responsible for the acidification of river, the Chief Secretary said, “Much of the acidification of river happens because of the careless pumping out of water.” He said, “Often the miners keep coal on the hill and when rain comes, rain water gets mixed with the coal and drips down to the river body turning the river acidic.” He added, “Not only that the box that is used for coal mining, gets filled up due to rain and if the miners want to mine they have to pump the water out, the water mixed with coal already turned acidic and when these water is pumped out into the river, it is bound to affect the river since it is heavily acidic.” He also raised concerned about the drying up of many rivers due to this activity besides threatening the health of the people. According to Warjri, such pollution and contamination of the river bodies is due to careless pumping of untreated coal water and dumping of coal. He said, “There is need for regulation to ensure that water from coal mines are treated before it gets to the natural system.” Abandoned coal mines are also another reason which pose serious threat to environment where maximum leakage of acid drainage mine (ADM) to the rivers. (From our Bureau) meghalaya24/wordpress/index.php/archives/1905
Posted on: Wed, 02 Jul 2014 19:22:07 +0000
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