CHITRADURGA: It is official that mining in Chitradurga and Tumkur districts has a huge impact on the environment as most of the forests have been razed and no afforestation measures have been taken up. This is evident from the report submitted by the Central Empowered Committee (CEC) appointed by Supreme Court.The CEC found huge areas of illegal mining. The fact that the environmental impact of mining in Chitradurga is lesser than that in Bellary and Tumkur, is not comforting.Citing the SESA Goa mining company, it stated that huge dumps of mining wastes have been found in private and forest land outside the leased area.A copy of the CEC report that is with Express states that out of 18 leased mines, 12 were involved in irregularities, by using forest areas to create roads and pits to dump ore. It has found over extraction of ore as is evident from the quantity of production of iron ore which was just 12.79 lakh MT during 2001-02 and increased enormously to 65.63 MT during 2008-09, which was considered the boom period.CEC has also found the adverse effects of mining on vegetation. Mining dust had destroyed large scale green cover, besides noise and water pollution. The CEC has recommended the use of the 25 million tones of stocked iron ore in Bellary, Chitradurga and Tumkur districts to meet the demands of the domestic steel industry but not to export. It has suggested that sale could be undertaken only by a designated government agency as per the procedure approved by the SC.
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