Mining – India 1
1. New nuke plants approved for Gujarat, Rajasthan 1
2. Vedanta Says India Bauxite Mine On Track Of 4Q Start 2
3. Vedanta trying to grab mineral-rich land' 2
4. Sterlite Industries posts 42% fall in Q1 net 3
5. Survey not conducted properly' 4
6. SAIL registers PAT of INR 1326 crore in Q1 4
7. Letters in blood to the Prez 6
8. No mining in Tiger reserve' 6
9. Mining scam jolts Naveen government 7
10. Mining scam wakes up dist officials 9
11. Bombay HC says no to sand mining in areas near sea 9
Mining – International 10
12. OceanaGold's NZ mines performing 10
13. Alcoa Razes Rain Forest in Court Case Led by Brazil Prosecutors 11
14. China vows ‘reasonable’ result in iron ore talks 21
15. Report: Land mine contamination vast in Vietnam 22
16. Ganga threatened by increasing pollution 24
17. Alaska Natives try to halt proposed Pebble Mine 25
18. 2007 coverage: Bristol Bay on the brink 25
19. U.K. Stocks Fluctuate as Mining Shares Climb, Shell Retreats 26
Other News 27
20. Funds relief for NREGS worker’s kids 27
21. NREGS implementation wins praises 28
22. At last, fillip for tribal land rights 28
23. Delhi to have 30% green cover by 2011: CM 29
24. Checking pollution at thermal power plants 30
25. Foreign Assistance for Rural Development Projects 30
Mining – India
New nuke plants approved for Gujarat, Rajasthan
The government has accorded approval for setting up nuclear power plants in Gujarat and Rajasthan with a combined generating capacity of 2,800 MW, parliament was informed Thursday.
The plants will be located at Kakrapar in Gujarat and Rawatbhata in Rajasthan and will each have two units of 700 MW each, Minister of State for Science and Technology and Earth Sciences Prithviraj Chavan said in a written reply in the Rajya Sabha.
Both sites are already home to nuclear power plants, with the one at Rawatbhata generating 740 MW of electricity and the one at Kakrapar generating 440 MW.
"Similarly, in principle approval has been accorded for sites at Kudankulam in Tamil Nadu and Jaitapur in Maharashtra for setting up light water reactors through imports," Chavan said.
A nuclear power plant with four reactors of 1,000 MW each is currently being constructed at Kudankulam.
"More nuclear power plants at additional sites are also planned. However, details are not yet finalized," Chavan added.
Of the country's installed nuclear power capacity of 4,120 MW, 320 MW is based on light water reactors and the balance 3,800 MW is based on heavy water reactors.
The installed capacity will reach 7,280 MW by 2011 by completion of projects under construction, Chavan said, adding: "More reactors, both of indigenous designs and based on international co-operation are planned to increase the nuclear power capacity."
"The tariffs of nuclear power are competitive with that of coal fired thermal power stations at locations away from coal mines. In addition nuclear power is clean and environment friendly, as it has no greenhouse gas emissions," Chavan added.
http://www.hindustantimes.com/StoryPage/StoryPage.aspx?sectionName=HomePage&id=1c9c3336-fa50-4243-8c34-4ca00e0def28&Headline=New+nuke+plants+approved+for+Gujarat+Rajasthan
Vedanta Says India Bauxite Mine On Track Of 4Q Start
LONDON -(Dow Jones)- London-listed miner Vedanta PLC (VED.LN) Friday said it doesn't expect protests will derail the start of mining at a controversial bauxite mine in India.
"Residual" permits should be obtained in coming months to allow mining to begin in October or November, CEO MS Mehta said in a conference call following the release of Vedanta's first quarter earnings. "We don't see any issue coming in the way."
Mehta said the company is finishing a conveyor belt that will connect the Niyamgiri bauxite mine in the state of Orissa to its Lanjigarh alumina refinery.
The Niyamgiri mine has been contested by tribal people who believe the hills where the deposit is located are sacred. India's Supreme Court gave Vedanta the right to mine the deposit in August last year, but human rights groups and environmental activists are campaigning against its startup.
Mehta said the project has been approved at all regulatory levels, and has the support of locals. About half of the employees at Vedanta's Niyamgiri refinery live locally, he added.
The beginning of mining at Niyamgiri will help Vedanta in reducing production costs at its aluminum smelters in India from $1,290 per metric ton to its goal of $900/ton, Mehta said.
-By Matthew Walls, Dow Jones Newswires; +44 (0)20 7842 9412; matthew.walls@dowjones.com
Click here to go to Dow Jones NewsPlus, a web front page of today's most important business and market news, analysis and commentary: http://www.djnewsplus.com/access/al?rnd=%2Ba5Lz8J90kdQ%2F%2Fo1CwsSQw%3D%3D. You can use this link on the day this article is published and the following day.
http://www.easybourse.com/bourse/actualite/vedanta-says-india-bauxite-mine-on-track-of-4q-start-711876
Vedanta trying to grab mineral-rich land'
Express News Service
First Published : 30 Jul 2009 03:48:00 AM IST
BHUBANESWAR: BJP Legislature Party leader KV Singhdeo today stunned the Assembly by alleging that Vedanta Resources chairman Anil Agarwal is trying to grab 6,000 acres of land rich in rare earth minerals on the pretext of university for atomic energy generation.
Questioning Vedanta’s motive for acquiring such a large area in an ecologically sensitive zone closure to the sea coast, Singhdeo said there are huge deposits of illemnite, lignite, zircon, synthetic rutile and other rare earth minerals which are used for atomic energy. Incidentally, the company is planning to set up a 6,000 mega watt power project, he said.
‘‘I am sure that Agarwal will not set up any university at Puri, he is only interested in the land,’’ he said.
The shareholders have started questioning the shady deals of the company in its annual general body meeting in London yesterday. There are also reports of huge investment (over 4.5 million pound) by Church of England in Vedanta and the shareholders are kept in the dark about it, he said.
When the ruling BJD is in a tearing hurry to pass the Vedanta University Bill in the Assembly, Agarwal of the Anil Agarwal Foundation, the sponsor of the proposed university, is facing charges of FERA violation, Singhdeo said and added that the Vedanta chief had moved the Delhi High Court seeking anticipatory bail.
He further alleged that a Supreme Court committee had observed that Vedanta has falsified reports to obtain clearance from the Ministry of Environment and Forests. The company is facing public agitation for the last two-three days over Niyamgiri mining.
Since the Assembly is taking up a private university bill for the first time, he demanded that the Vedanta University Bill be referred to a select committee as was done in the case of Technical University Bill in 2002.
Many members are not aware of either Anil Agarwal or his companies. The House should not take up such a bill in a hurry, he said.
Congress chief whip Prasad Harichandan also opposed the bill saying that the land under acquisition for the university is falling in an ecologically sensitive zone where there is wildlife sanctuary. Besides, the proposed university will be on a sweet water zone which should not be disturbed. He strongly opposed to Government handing over of about 1,300 acres of Jagannath temple land for a private university.
http://www.expressbuzz.com/edition/story.aspx?Title=Vedanta+trying+to+grab+mineral-rich+land&artid=Rl8eoT7jNv4=&SectionID=mvKkT3vj5ZA=&MainSectionID=fyV9T2jIa4A=&SectionName=nUFeEOBkuKw=&SEO=
Sterlite Industries posts 42% fall in Q1 net
BS Reporter / Mumbai July 29, 2009, 16:32 IST
Sterlite Industries, the Vedanta Group diversified base metals producer, has posted 42 per cent decline in net profit at Rs 924 crore in the first quarter of the current financial as compared to Rs 1,595 crore in the same quarter of the previous year. Net sales of the company also plunged by 21 per cent to Rs 4,537 crore from Rs 5,770 crore. Earnings per share (EPS) slipped, therefore, to Rs 9.49 from Rs 16.25 in the first quarter of the previous year.
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During the quarter, aluminium production slipped to 72,056 tonnes compared with 88,989 tonnes in the corresponding prior quarter. The decrease in production was primarily on account of the complete ramp down of Balco plant I smelter. Revenues and EBITDA for Q1, 2009 were Rs 615 crore and Rs 147 crore, respectively, compared with Rs 1,167 crore and Rs 452 crore in the corresponding prior quarter.
The positive impact of lower operating costs was more than offset by the lower LME aluminium prices and the complete ramp down of Balco plant I smelter. The company reported that construction of the new 325,000 tonnes aluminium smelter and 1,200 Mw CPP at Balco is progressing well. All major packages have been ordered with shipments of equipment starting to arrive on site. The project is on schedule for first metal tapping from October 2010.
During Q1, copper cathode production at Sterlite’s refineries was 78,189 tonnes, an increase of 15 per cent as compared to the corresponding prior quarter. However, cathode production in Q1 was lower than its rated capacity primarily on account of low copper in concentrate and certain operational issues, which have since been rectified. During the quarter, mined metal production at our Australian mines was stable at 7,000 tonnes.
During Q1, HZL produced 162,241 tonnes of zinc mined metal and 20,601 tonnes of lead mined metal, an increase of 17 per cent and 5 per cent, respectively, compared with the corresponding prior quarter. During Q1, the company produced 139,315 tonnes of refined zinc, an increase of 9 per cent as compared to the corresponding quarter of the previous year. The refined zinc production in Q1 was lower than the production in Q4, 2009, primarily on account of operational factors during the current quarter at the hydro smelters at Chanderiya, which are being addressed. Sales during Q1 were augmented by the sale of 73,962 dry metric tonnes of surplus zinc concentrate.
During the quarter, saleable silver production was 29,527 kilograms, an increase of 25 per cent compared with the corresponding prior quarter. The increase in production was primarily on account of higher silver content in the mined ore.
Sterlite stocks closed at Rs 621.15, down 5.53 per cent on the Bombay Stock Exchange today.
http://www.business-standard.com/india/news/sterlite-industries-posts-42-fall-in-q1-net/69302/on
Survey not conducted properly'
TNN 30 July 2009, 11:04pm IST
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BELLARY: A survey held in Tumti village on July 16, 17 and 18 concluded inappropriately, stated district project coordinator of Jala Samvardhane
Yojana Sangha (dept of water resources, minor irrigation) K Uday Kumar.
In a letter to the Principal Chief Conservator of Forest, Karnataka, he mentioned what he noticed in the survey, which started from a boundary stone on an agricultural land of Tumti village. In a lease map and S and D report of Department of Mines and Geology, the survey commenced from a permanent point identified as X. The total station was used. North is fixed using magnetic compass. The points X and A located after survey do not tally with field record. Angle measurements are taken from the copy of the drawing using a protractor. The petitioner has not agreed to the survey done and gave the same in writing, he stated.
On second and third day, the survey was done by the surveyors of Forest and Mines and Geology department of Bellary, in presence of some of the officers. Survey of India informed that they have come as observers on the instructions of their superior, he added.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/NEWS/City/Hubli/Survey-not-conducted-properly/articleshow/4839078.cms
SAIL registers PAT of INR 1326 crore in Q1
Friday, 31 Jul 2009
In spite of input cost pressures and price realizations being far below the significantly high levels obtained in the first quarter of FY ’09, Steel Authority of India Limited recorded profit before tax of INR 2,005.91 crore lower by 28% YoY and profit after tax of INR 1,326.09 crore lower by 27.7% YoY during Q1 of the current financial year.
The company’s net turnover at INR 8,950.64 crore was lower by 16.5% YoY.
These unaudited financial results of SAIL were taken on record here today by the company’s Board of Directors.
The adverse impact of input price increases, especially of coking coal by almost 49% or INR 868 crore and drop in steel prices was partially neutralized by higher production and sales volumes, increase in special and value added steel production, improved operational parameters and aggressive cost efficiencies, resulting in savings to the extent of about INR 570 crore during Q1.
High lights
1. Best ever Q1 saleable steel production & sales and growth in volumes at 4% & 5% respectively
2. Production of value added items up 21%
3. Techno indices improved further.
4. Modernization & expansion related CAPEX more than tripled during quarter.
Domestic sales grew by about 5% YoY with best ever Q1 sales of value added products. Exports at 50,517 tonnes were also up by 13%.
The sales performance was supported by best ever Q1 saleable steel production at 3.06 million tonnes up by 4% YoY. Q1 sales turnover at INR 9,746.75 crore was lower by 20% YoY however, EBDITA to net sales ratio rose to 27% in Q1 from 22.6% in Q4 of FY ’09.
SAIL plants operated at an overall capacity utilization of 111% during the quarter. With continued thrust on production of value added and special steels, the major SAIL plants produced 1.15 million tonnes of these items during Q1, a growth of 21% YoY. The growth areas included electrode-quality wire rods, SAILCOR in HR CR coils, LPG grade HR coils plates etc. Today SAIL produces 61% of its total reinforcement steel output in High Strength Earthquake Resistant grade.
Further improvement in operational efficiencies helped to reduce the impact of lower realizations and higher input costs. Production through the energy-efficient continuous casting route crossed 2.2 million tonnes. Other important techno-economic indices also showed substantial improvement, with reduction in coke rate by 3.5%, specific energy consumption by 1.5% and improvement in blast furnace productivity by 5%.
During Q1, the captive mines of SAIL at Chasnalla, Jitpur and Ramnagore produced about 220,000 tonnes of coal, which was 20% higher YoY. SAIL’s efforts to achieve raw material security received a boost in June ’09 with the Ministry of Coal approving the plan to mine 4 million tonnes of coal from Tasra coking coal mine. As regards the new coal block at Sitanala, its mining plan had been approved in January ’09 and EIA/EMP study has been submitted for environment clearance. With regard to Rowghat iron ore mine in Chhattisgarh, the state government has recommended grant of final forestry clearance in June ’09. Discussions with the state of Jharkhand have been continuing at different levels to satisfactorily resolve the issue of Chiria iron ore mine.
Mr SK Roongta chairman o SAIL while announcing the Q1 results said that “In spite of downturn continuing in global steel markets, the overall demand scenario in India is encouraging. Although input cost pressures are easing now, SAIL’s thrust on operational and cost efficiencies will be intensified in the current and subsequent quarters and we aim to achieve best ever capacity utilization during the year.”
http://steelguru.com/news/index/2009/07/31/MTA0ODA0/SAIL_registers_PAT_of_INR_1326_crore_in_Q1.html
Letters in blood to the Prez
Mazhar Ali, TNN 31 July 2009, 04:56am IST
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CHANDRAPUR: Keeping the heat on, a bunch of protesters supporting Bandu Dhotre in his hunger strike against the proposed Lohara mines of Adani
Power Limited (APL), on Thursday wrote letters to the President of India Pratibha Patil in their own blood. The protesters have urged her to revoke the allocation of coal blocks to the company in Lohara jungle.
Meanwhile, Bandu Dhotre resumed his fast unto death in front of the district collectorate in the afternoon after being discharged from hospital, boosting the morale of the protesters.
As Dhotre's hunger strike enters its twelfth day, his supporters are making each day of the agitation eventful by staging novel protests against the government and APL. On Thursday, around 20 supporters expressed their solidarity with this agitation by writing letters to Patil. "We drew our blood with the help of syringes and collected it in a bottle. Then everybody dipped a quill in his own blood and wrote a letter to the President urging cancellation of the Lohara coal blocks allocated to APL," said an agitator Mukesh Bhandakkar.
The local unit of Nationalist Congress Party, which had kept away from the anti-Adani protest so far, on Thursday stepped forward to express its solidarity with Dhotre's agitation. "District president of NCP Rajendra Vaidya was one of the 20 protesters who wrote a letter with their blood. Even doctors were at the forefront in this agitation and office bearers of the local IMA unit Dr Mangesh Gulwade too drew his blood to write a letter to the President," added Bhandakkar.
Meanwhile, the Prahar Yuva Shakti Sanghatna opened a new front against Adani's mine by staging a protest and courting arrest to flay the allocation of Lohara coal block. A bunch of youths led by its district President Pradeep Deshmukh gathered at Old Warora Naka square in the evening and shouted anti-Adani slogans. They tried to burn an effigy of Adani, however alert cops refused permission to do so and arrested all the agitators.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/4839415.cms
No mining in Tiger reserve'
Ashwin Aghor / DNA
Friday, July 31, 2009 2:25 IST
Mumbai: In a major boost to the efforts of conservationists opposing mining near Tadoba Andhari Tiger Reserve (TATR) in Chandrapur district, union minister of state for environment and forests Jairam Ramesh has said mining will not be allowed near the reserve.
Meanwhile, the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) has rejected primary application of mining in Lohara forests. Rajesh Gopal, NTCA member secretary, said, "Allowing coal mining in such proximity of tiger reserve is simply out of question."
Ramesh gave the assurance to state forest department officials during a two-day meeting of field directors of all the 37 tiger reserves in the country held at Sariska in Rajasthan on July 25 and 26.
AK Joshi, principal chief conservator of forests (wildlife), Nandkishore, chief conservator of forests for Nagpur circle and field directors AK Mishra (Melghat) and Mohan Jha (Pench) also attended the meet.
Issues such as man-animal conflict, buffer zone and expediting funds availability were raised in the meeting. The breeding of tigers outside TATR was also highlighted during the presentation. The officials also informed the minister there were breeding tigresses even outside Tadoba in the buffer zone and mining activity in the area would prove detrimental to the animals.
Joshi confirmed that the minister was against mining around TATR. "He made it clear that any activity that will affect wildlife and forest will not at all be allowed," Joshi said.
Rajesh Gopal, member-secretary, NTCA, said, "Officials form Maharashtra forest department raised the issue of mining around Tadoba during the meet. As far as NTCA is concerned, coal mines will not be allowed near TATR."
In fact, NTCA has already rejected a primary application that came to it for comment. "I have clearly mentioned that coal mine cannot be allowed in Lohara forests due to its proximity with TATR," Gopal said.
http://www.dnaindia.com/mumbai/report_no-mining-in-tiger-reserve_1278589
Mining scam jolts Naveen government
Srimoy Kar
First Published : 31 Jul 2009 10:39:00 PM IST
Last Updated : 31 Jul 2009 12:38:48 AM IST
Two issues have traditionally troubled Orissa politicians. One is kendu leaf and the other mining. While kendu leaf has ceased to disturb the rulers, it is the turn of minerals to embarrass the Naveen Patnaik government.
As the Opposition continues to badger the state government over rampant and large-scale illegal mining of iron ore and manganese and loss of revenue running into thousands of crores of rupees, skeletons are slowly tumbling out of the cupboard. The recent admission of steel and mines minister Raghunath Mohanty on leakage of revenue and subsequent suspension of two officials for complicity in illegal raising and transportation of iron ore in Mayurbhanj district has not only vindicated the charges levelled against the government but is also threatening to expose a mining scam that has its tentacles spread across the country. Even more serious are the accusations in certain quarters of the ruling Biju Janta Dal for patronising illegal mining of iron ore and manganese and protecting the violators.
Orissa’s chronic poverty and inability to climb the development index in spite of its immense natural and mineral wealth is a big paradox. This should come as no surprise since the custodians of this wealth have for years connived in its misappropriation at the cost of the state exchequer. It is an open secret that illegal mining of iron ore in the state’s north-western belt following the steel boom has been bleeding the state white for years. Yet the authorities have chosen to turn a blind eye to this huge drain of state resources. When the Opposition sought to pin down the Naveen Patnaik government about two weeks ago in the assembly over illegal mining in Keonjhar district by the Bihar-based Ram Bahadur Thakur Limited (RBTL), it did not perhaps, realise that what they mentioned was only the tip of the iceberg. Soon more bungling and misappropriation in the mining sector began to dominate the proceedings of the House.
The variety and richness of Orissa’s mineral resources has for years attracted the predatory attention of industrial houses who have sought to turn the state’s mines into happy hunting grounds in collusion with corrupt officials and politicians. And they have succeeded to a great extent. So much so that it is rumoured that ruling BJD’s financial muscle in the last election was pepped up by the mining lobby.
Let’s come to how things went wrong in the assembly. The question, in the assembly, was how RBTL, which had applied for liquidation at Patna High Court, was still being considered for mining leases in Keonjhar district? Plus, how can the state grant permission to the power of attorney holder of RBTL to be the custodian of the mines and engage security to check pilferage before the leases are settled in favour of the company? It is a different matter that illegal raising of ores went on unabated from the same mines for years and the prime suspects were the power of attorney holders of the company at different times. Did the state machinery not tacitly encourage theft of its own resources by this arrangement? What was the minister of steel and mines trying to convey when he assured the House that the mines in question would not be allotted in favour of RBTL? The mining department is making the plea that it is short staffed and does not have the wherewithal to police such vast resources adequately. But this does not give them the right to overlook such open robbery.
There are several such cases of state’s mineral resources being plundered in broad daylight. The most interesting part is how such illegal generation of ores get legalised by false transit permits. This is a racket which is equally mind boggling. False transit permits issued under the direct supervision of mining officials lead to loss of all kinds. The inability of the government press to print and supply transit passes has resulted in indiscriminate duplication, and such documents are reportedly available even at pan shops in Joda and Badbil areas of Keonjhar district.
Contrary to the blame on the government press, a source pointed out that transit passes printed by it were not even lifted by the mining department for three years. Though certain conscientious officers like the then transport commissioner, S B Agnihotri suggested several measures to prevent revenue leakage due to forgery and theft of minerals in 2006, the same is gathering dust. He had suggested securitised stationery for issuing transit permits in Magnetic Ink Character Recogniser (MICR) paper with e-beam holograms, water marks, micro printing in the background and ultraviolet visible emblem to make things foolproof. According to him, a paltry 10 per cent increase in revenue through prevention of theft, forgery and overloading of trucks would get additional Rs 100 crore to the state exchequer every year. But who listens to this kind of advice when the pelf is high for all?
One does not have to look far for reasons behind this open brigandry. For years, booty from smuggling of minerals has fattened the coffers of officers, politicians, small time crooks and transporters. If the opposition had not spilled the beans it would have been business as usual in Orissa mines. That the state government is culpable is obvious from the attempts in the assembly to sweep matters under the carpet. It is only after being cornered by a belligerent and persistent opposition Naveen Patnaik agreed to a probe by the vigilance wing of the police, but the opposition wants a CBI inquiry.
The Naveen government has come to power for a record third term with a mandate to provide transparent and effective governance. The goings-on in the mining department are certainly not transparent as is evident. The government must initiate immediate and stern steps to bring the guilty to book. Simply suspending some low rung officials in the mining department will not work. The future of Orissa’s prosperity is locked in its natural wealth. An avaricious few should not be allowed to spirit it away and hold the state’s future to ransom.
srimoy@epmltd.com
http://www.expressbuzz.com/edition/story.aspx?Title=Mining+scam+jolts+Naveen+government&artid=94Nn9mMTm/Y=&SectionID=XVSZ2Fy6Gzo=&MainSectionID=XVSZ2Fy6Gzo=&SEO=Naveen+Patnaik,+RBTL,+Raghunath+Mohanty,+Mayurbhan&SectionName=m3GntEw72ik=
Mining scam wakes up dist officials
;Statesman News Service
TALCHER, 30 JULY: The mining scam which rocked the state recently seems to have had a salutary effect on district-level officials, police, vigilance and transporters. Suddenly, seizures, raids and arrests have started off.
The multi-crore illegal mining and transport of minerals racket had been exposed by the BJP leader Mr KV Singh Deo prompting the government to order a vigilance probe. The government initiated action against a few erring officers but the Opposition continued to unravel scams one after another in this money spinning sector embarrassing the government.
Today, the Angul district police claimed to have busted a coal smuggling racket by arresting 24 people including kingpin Debesh Das. A pistol and some bullets were also seized from his possession.
Ten vehicles were seized with about 100 tons of illegal coal.
Angul SP Mr Pratik Mahanty told the media at Vikrampur here today that a five member special squad was constituted on specific information to bust this particular coal smuggling. On surprise checking along the Handidhua ~ Nalco square, 10 vehicles were found carrying illegal coal with false documents.
While seven of the vehicles were from Handidhua jungle, three were from Bharatpur mine .
Mr Mahanty said illegal coal was dumped by colliery’s internal transport vehicles at certain points from where these vehicles would lift the material.
He said that investigations are on and more arrests will follow. On the involvement of state mining department, he said all concerned are under investigation .
He blamed coal authorities for not having double checking system and
lacking any procedure to check
pilferage.
Asked why police earlier was not able to unearth this rackets, he said action would be taken if any specific complaint is made against any police official.
It may be noted here that the Opposition had leveled allegations of how fake transit permits and passes were issued to smuggle iron ore and other minerals.
A couple of days ago, truck loads of manganese were seized, and of the several trucks, three managed to flee.
The transport authorities suspended a couple of officers who in turn claimed that gangsters from Jharkhand had forcibly taken away the trucks.
The spurt in raids, seizures etc has led people to discuss about how the illegal multi-crore business was flourishing ever since the boom in the year 2000 and at a time when the government was claiming transparency in all spheres.
Even the much touted anti-corruption drive led by the state vigilance had rarely dealt with mining related matters.
Apparently, it had failed to keep a vigil on the activities of those, including officials, connected with the mining industry.
http://www.thestatesman.net/page.news.php?clid=9&theme=&usrsess=1&id=262901
Bombay HC says no to sand mining in areas near sea
STAFF WRITER 22:19 HRS IST
Mumbai, July 30 (PTI) The Bombay High Court today directed that no sand mining and dredging activities should be allowed in Coastal Regulation Zone (CRZ) in Maharashtra.
In CRZ -- area close to the seashore -- industrial activities are banned, but a PIL filed in the High Court had complained that sand mining was rampant in Sindhudurg, Ratnagiri and Raigad districts.
Court had earlier asked Chief Judicial Magistrates of respective districts to visit the sites and file reports.
Reports, submitted today, say that sand mining is going on in CRZ areas in Ratnagiri and Raigad, though in Sindhudurg such activity was not noticed.
Specially, in areas along Savitri river, mining is going on, the report said.
Division bench of Chief Justice Swatanter Kumar and Justice A M Khanwilkar directed the DSP or DCP concerned to ensure that no sand mining takes place in CRZ areas.
http://ptinews.com/news/204097_Bombay-HC-says-no-to-sand-mining-in-areas-near-sea
Mining – International
OceanaGold's NZ mines performing
Published: 6:50AM Friday July 31, 2009
Source: NZPA
• READ
Reuters
OceanaGold Corp said its New Zealand goldfields are continuing to perform consistently.
The company's New Zealand mines achieved gold sales of 75,319 ounces in the three months to June 30, which is the company's second quarter.
The gold sales were slightly ahead of expectations but were down from the previous quarter because of planned maintenance to an autoclave at Macraes Goldfield in Otago.
The autoclave was re-bricked in April on time and on budget.
Macraes Goldfield produced 51,149 ounces of gold in the quarter, down from 66,366 ounces in the same period last year.
The company said the lower production was also due to a feed of lower grade material and use of material from stockpiles.
Movement at the mine was affected by wet weather in May but movement out of the open pit in June was the third highest on record.
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Recoveries from the Macraes processing plant were 80.3% in the quarter, down from 81.7% in the previous quarter.
There was one lost time injury at the mine in the quarter.
The company said there were no lost time injuries at the Reefton Goldfield on the West Coast during the quarter after new initiatives were implemented.
Material movement was down at Reefton due to wet weather in the quarter and planned maintenance.
Gold production from Reefton was 23,092 ounces of gold. The mill throughput of 308,196 tonnes in the quarter was 20% more than the plant design.
Commenting on exploration, the company said the results from 400 soil samples collected across a northern extension area of the Hyde Macraes Shear Zone were encouraging and likely to lead to target drilling in the second half of the year.
The company is also looking at an extension of the Round Hill deposit at the Macraes mine to the east of the processing plant, an area that was last mined in 1998.
Holes have been drilled and the company is awaiting results. The company expects to be able to say more about an exploration programme at the Frasers Underground mine in the third quarter.
A major geological review of the Reefton Goldfield is also under way and will continue for the rest of 2009.
A possible deep drilling programme to test the potential of the "Birthday Reef" structure in the company's Blackwater permit in the Reefton area is being costed.
The company reported earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation of $US22.5 ($NZ35.16) million in the three months to June 30. This was up from $US1.1 million in the same quarter last year but down from $US31 million in the first quarter.
http://tvnz.co.nz/business-news/oceanagold-s-nz-mines-performing-2881297
Alcoa Razes Rain Forest in Court Case Led by Brazil Prosecutors
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By Michael Smith and Adriana Brasileiro
July 31 (Bloomberg) -- For four decades, Edimar Bentes and his family have survived by farming tiny clearings in the jungle near their dirt-floor shack in the state of Para in the Brazilian Amazon.
On this April afternoon, Bentes, 56, squats in the driving rain and dips a glass into what just four years ago was a crystal-clear stream that provided drinking and bathing water. He frowns as the glass fills with brown silt. A thin man with short-cropped dark hair and a tanned, deeply wrinkled forehead, Bentes gazes around his land.
There are no signs of the deer, armadillos and pacas he used to hunt to feed his wife and 10 children.
For Bentes and thousands of others in the Juruti region of Para whose livelihood depends on wildlife and plants, everything changed in 2006. That’s when New York-based Alcoa Inc., the world’s second-largest primaryaluminum producer, started to bulldoze a 56-kilometer (35-mile) swath of the rain forest across hundreds of families’ properties to build a railway.
This cleared corridor, 100 meters (109 yards) wide, will lead to a mine that will chew up 10,500 hectares (25,900 acres) of virgin jungle over three decades.
More than half of the mine will lie inside a forest that by Brazilian federal law is supposed to be preserved unharmed forever for local residents. By year’s end, Alcoa says, the railway will transport 7,000 tons a day of bauxite, the dark red ore that’s used to make aluminum, from the mine to a port on the Amazon River.
‘Want to Cry’
“It makes you want to cry when you see this stream,” says Bentes, his bare feet sinking into the mud. He views a wasteland of uprooted trees and brown rivulets seeping into the water. “It reminds me of everything bad that Alcoa did to our land.”
A growing array of evidence in court documents puts Alcoa among the multinational corporations that prosecutors accuse of destroying or causing destruction of the world’s largest rain forest.
Brazilian federal and Para state prosecutors sued Alcoa’s Brazilian mining subsidiary in 2005 in an effort to block the Juruti mine, saying the company had circumvented the law by not applying for a federal permit and instead seeking a license from the state of Para.
After four years of legal haggling, the suit is still pending. Alcoa, which denies any wrongdoing, has already completed construction of the railway, port and processing plants. It’s now ready to start mining.
“The state agency has no power to give anyone full rights to exploit land, especially in the case of a reserve,” state prosecutor Raimundo Moraes says. “Alcoa invaded the area, undeterred. Alcoa has no shame.”
‘All Necessary Licenses’
In written responses to questions from Bloomberg News, Alcoa says it “has all necessary government licenses to implement the Juruti mining project.”
The Amazon, which spans nine countries and is roughly the size of Australia, has for centuries been the lungs of the Earth, its plants and trees absorbing pollution from the air. But that strength is fading. The world’s largest inhaler of carbon dioxide is shrinking -- thus aggravating, instead of slowing, global warming.
Every week, federal prosecutors say, people acting outside the law use bulldozers, chain saws or fire to wipe out parts of the jungle to make way for crops, cattle and mines.
The fires men set to clear land for ranches and farms create 6 percent of the carbon dioxide spewed into the air worldwide, according to the Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Union of Concerned Scientists. That equates to half of all the emissions from cars, trucks, planes, trains and ships in the world.
‘Amazon is the Key’
Brazil has become the planet’s fourth-biggest polluter.
The fires that rage across the Amazon could help increase Earth’s average surface temperature by as much as 11.5 degrees this century, says theIntergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a group of scientists from 194 countries.
Global warming threatens to melt glaciers, raise sea levels and lead to drinking water shortages, the United Nations-sanctioned panel says.
“We are not going to reduce global warming if we don’t do something about deforestation in the Amazon,” says Doug Boucher, director of the Tropical Forest and Climate Initiative at Concerned Scientists. “It’s that simple, and very alarming. The Amazon is a big part -- if not the key part -- of a solution to deal with global warming.”
Wal-Mart, McDonald’s
To date, companies and individuals have destroyed more than 857,000 square kilometers (331,000 square miles) of the Amazon, an area almost the size of France and England combined, according to the UN Environment Programme. Cattle ranchers have caused 80 percent of the illegal deforestation, according to Brazil’s environment ministry.
They sell steers to Brazil’s three biggest beef producers. One of them, Sao Paulo-based JBS SA, is the world’s largest; the others are Santo Andre-basedMarfrig Alimentos SA and Bertin SA of Lins.
Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the world’s biggest retailer; French supermarket chainCarrefour SA; and McDonald’s Corp. have purchased beef from those companies, according to Brazilian internal revenue service sales and export records.
Ford Motor Co., General Motors Co. and Daimler AG’s Mercedes-Benz have bought leather for car and truck seats from Auburn Hills, Michigan-based Eagle Ottawa LLC, a leather company supplied with materials from illegally deforested ranches, the records show.
These multinationals say they’re working to avoid buying products originating in deforested land.
Cargill’s Port
Alcoa is the latest company in a decade-long legacy of global corporations that have thwarted Brazil’s environmental regulations, federal prosecutors say.
Minneapolis-based Cargill Inc., the largest privately held company in the U.S., spent $20 million to build a grain port on the Amazon River in 2003 that led to farmers illegally destroying thousands of hectares of rain forest to grow soybeans, says Felicio Pontes, a federal prosecutor who sued to block the project.
In early February, soybeans were piled high in a storage area at Cargill’s Amazon port, waiting to be loaded onto a ship bound for Europe. The company ships about 60,000 tons of soybeans a year grown near the town of Santarem. Before Cargill built the port, there was no large-scale soybean production in the area.
‘Completely Obvious’
Cargill hired The Nature Conservancy, an Arlington, Virginia-based nonprofit group, to confirm that soybean farmers aren’t clearing the Amazon around Santarem. The group says it has certified this year that 155 of 383 farms weren’t deforesting.
“It’s completely obvious that Cargill’s port gave an incentive that led to deforestation,” Pontes says.
Both Alcoa and Cargill, prosecutors say, have persuaded local officials to sign off on their plans, flouting federal law. Brazil’s constitution says minerals are national resources that should be overseen by tougher federal agencies, says Daniel Azeredo, a federal prosecutor in the Amazon port of Belem, who specializes in environmental lawsuits.
“The problem is that in Brazil we have weak institutions and laws, and companies take advantage of that,” he says. “We have laws, but they are impossible to enforce, which gives companies complete impunity to do whatever they want to profit.”
Alcoa says it has abided by the law.
‘Any and All’
“In Brazil, public attorneys tend to challenge in court any and all major industrial and infrastructure projects,” Alcoa wrote in responses to questions from Bloomberg News. Alcoa says it doesn’t need federal approval for its mine in Juruti.
Cargill also says it has done the right thing in Brazil. The company won proper state approval to build its river transport center, says Afonso Champi Jr., Cargill’s external affairs director in Brazil. He says the company strives to guarantee the soybeans it buys don’t come from deforested land.
Alcoa, which mines and produces aluminum in 31 countries, champions itself as a responsible steward of global resources.
“Operating in a manner that protects and promotes the health and well-being of the environment is a core value to Alcoa,” the company says on its Website.
Cargill, whose products worldwide include animal feed, salt, steel and financial services, says, “Being socially responsible as a corporation means that we care about the environment.”
EPA Settlement
Alcoa has clashed with regulators and environmentalists in other countries. The University of Massachusetts’s Political Economy Research Institute ranks Alcoa as the 15th-most-toxic company in the U.S.
In 2003, Alcoa agreed with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and theJustice Department to pay about $330 million to clean up air pollution at a power plant within an aluminum factory in Rockdale, Texas -- a plant it has since shut down.
Alcoa has received mixed notices in Australia. In 1990, the UN Environment Programme gave the company an award for replanting forests it had destroyed to build a bauxite mine there. Alcoa, which generates electricity to process aluminum, obtained the lowest score in a 2008 review of utilities by the World Wildlife Fund.
The WWF said Alcoa had failed to adopt targets to cut greenhouse gas emissions by its coal-fired power plant in Victoria state.
Slashed Emissions
Alcoa says it gets rapped by environmentalists because its electrical power plants emit carbon. The company says it should get credit for all of the pollution it’s preventing by supplying the lightweight aluminum that makes cars and trucks more energy-efficient. Alcoa says it has slashed its greenhouse gas emissions by 36 percent since 1990.
In Brazil, Alcoa is doing business in a political climate that regulators say is favorable to polluters. Luciano Evaristo, a director at Ibama, the federal environmental agency, says forces in the government -- starting at the very top -- promote and finance industries that feed on illegal destruction of the rain forest.
President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva calls himself an environmentalist. In 2003, he introduced a plan to protect the Amazon, creating task forces to raid areas being deforested.
Copenhagen Conference
In December, Lula will join leaders from almost 200 other countries in Copenhagen at a UN-sponsored conference to discuss a successor to the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, the first major international pact on global warming.
“At Copenhagen, we will have to reach a global agreement that will be both just and ambitious if we want to bequeath a viable planet to future generations,” Lula said in a July 7 speech. Lula set a goal of reducing deforestation by 80 percent by 2020.
At the same time, Lula has authorized the building of new roads and power plants in the Amazon and has increased funding for ranches and factories in deforested areas. In June, he congratulated people for tearing down trees to create farms spurring economic growth.
“No one can say that someone is a criminal because he deforested,” Lula told a crowd of cheering ranchers in the Amazon city of Alta Floresta as he announced plans to legalize almost 300,000 ranches and farms built on illegally cleared land that once was rain forest.
‘Schizophrenic Government’
“It’s a completely schizophrenic government,” says Paulo Adario, who directs the Amazon campaign for nonprofit environmental group Greenpeace. “On one hand, they are combating deforestation. On the other, they are financing it.”
Foreigners have been cutting down Latin America’s rain forests since the 1600s, when Spanish and Portuguese conquerors cleared jungles from Mexico to Brazil to build ships, farms and cities. In the 1960s and 1970s, Texaco Inc.drilled dozens of oil wells in Ecuador’s Amazon, destroying rain forest and polluting the region with poisonous wastes.
Alcoa, which produced the first commercially available aluminum in 1888, has 63,000 employees around the world. The company produces enough sheeting to make 100 billion cans of beer and soda a year.
America’s largest aluminum producer sells ingots, sheets, wheels, fasteners and building materials to customers in the aerospace, packaging and automotive industries.
Stock Recovery
The company reported $26.9 billion in revenue last year. Its share price, which peaked at $47.35 in July 2007, slid as low as $5.22 on March 6 during the global economic meltdown. The stock value has since increased to $11.46, as of July 30, up 1.8 percent in the year-to-date.
Brazil has the world’s third-largest reserves of bauxite. In 1979, a group led by Rio de Janeiro-based Vale SA built a bauxite mine in Porto Trombetas, 60 kilometers from Juruti. In 1994, Alcoa joined Vale in the venture, whose other members today include Melbourne-based BHP Billiton Ltd. and Rio Tinto Plcof London.
The scarred land and fouled water around Porto Trombetas bears witness to the impact of the mine. Nearby, a lake called Lago Batata still turns bright red from bauxite wastes workers dumped for a decade.
The venture says it stopped polluting the lake in 1989 and now uses sealed holding ponds to contain overflow. The consortium replanted trees on the banks of the lake, but they’re low to the ground and brittle. Ademar Cavalcanti, the mine’s environmental director, says the cleanup will go on indefinitely.
Revived Project
Alcoa inherited its Juruti mining rights from Reynolds Inc., which it bought in 2000. Alcoa revived the project in 2003, as global economic growth increased demand.
Simao Jatene, the governor of Para, supported the Alcoa project. BNDES, Brazil’s national development bank, provided the company with 1.9 billion reais ($1 billion) of financing for construction.
In January 2005, Alcoa requested state permits to build the $1.7 billion mine. Gabriel Guerreiro, who was then Para’s environment secretary, says the company submitted an impact study done by an independent firm, Sao Paulo-based CNEC Engenharia SA.
Guerreiro says his agency analyzed Alcoa’s proposal and concluded the mine would be modern and efficient. Guerreiro says Para’s mineral riches must be explored for the good of the state’s 7.1 million residents, 50 percent of whom live in poverty.
‘Rich Civilization’
“Nobody is going to build a rich civilization without using the natural resources of the tropics,” he says.
Guerreiro gave Alcoa a preliminary license in June 2005 and asked for 35 improvements to the impact study. After Alcoa made adjustments, he recommended the project be accepted by the state environmental council, called Coema, which approved it in August 2005.
A month later, federal and state prosecutors sued Omnia Minerios Ltda., the Santarem-based Alcoa subsidiary running the mine; Para’s state government; and Ibama, the federal regulator. The government’s civil suit, filed in federal court in Santarem, says Omnia Minerios was required to seek and obtain a federal environmental permit.
Prosecutors say Ibama failed by not taking control of the licensing process. In court filings, Alcoa and the two regulators each say they followed proper procedures.
Court to Court
The case against Alcoa has languished for four years as the participants argue over which level of the Brazilian judicial system -- federal or state -- should have jurisdiction.
Franklin Feder, Alcoa’s Sao Paulo-based president for Latin America and the Caribbean, says Ibama advised Alcoa to get state approval for the mine.
Marcus Luiz Barroso Barros, Ibama’s president from 2003 to 2007, says no one told him about such a decision. He says he didn’t know about Alcoa’s project until after the company had applied for licensing with Para. At that point, he decided it would be too complicated for Ibama to get involved -- a position he now regrets.
“Now that I know more about Alcoa’s mine, looking at the significant impact it’s having in the area, I’d say it’s a major project that should have been handled by the federal agency,” says Barros, 61, a physician who’s now in private practice in the Amazon city of Manaus.
Licensing Guidelines
A government advisory panel called Conama lays out guidelines for when Ibama should get involved in reviewing a project.
“Ibama shall be responsible for the environmental licensing for projects and activities with a significant environmental impact of a national or regional scope,” Conama Resolution 237 says.
State regulators aren’t as reliable as the federal government, Barros says.
“The main problem with licensing by state agencies is that they are often too close to projects and fall victim more easily to political and economic pressures than Ibama,” he says. “They may be more easily manipulated.”
The state licensing of the Juruti mine was riddled with irregularities, the prosecutors’ suit says. Alcoa’s consultants limited their environmental research to two separate one-month periods during the dry season, in a jungle with some of the highest rainfall levels in the world, prosecutors say.
‘Comprehensive’
The researchers didn’t analyze how the mine, which will consume 505 cubic meters (133,407 gallons) of water per hour from an Amazon River inlet, will affect fishing. They also didn’t study how heavy ship traffic would affect fish populations near the port, prosecutors say.
“All environmental studies, conducted by qualified specialists, were comprehensive, as demonstrated by the fact that all necessary licenses were duly granted,” Alcoa said in its responses to questions from Bloomberg News.
Fatima de Sousa Paiva, a nun and community organizer who’s spent almost a decade near the Juruti mine area, says Alcoa approached the rain forest community like Portuguese explorers who grabbed Brazil in the 16th century.
“Alcoa offered gifts like plastic sandals, thermoses and bicycles,” says Paiva, 48, who teaches at a local elementary school. “To them, we were just some ignorant Indians in the way of their plans to make billions.”
In its written response, Alcoa said, “This is a groundless allegation.”
‘Provide for the People’
In granting Alcoa permission to mine in the Juruti preserve, Para officials clashed with Incra, the federal government’s land reform institute. By law, the reserve can be used only by residents to hunt, fish and gather nuts to sustain their families.
“The reserve allows a way to make sure the land is able to provide for the people,” the law says. All decisions about land use must be made by residents of the community, according to the law.
“Maybe the state wanted to play Alcoa’s game by approving an environmental licensing process that was full of holes, but we didn’t,” says Luciano Brunet, who runs Incra’s office in Santarem.
Brunet says Alcoa told residents that they didn’t have a right to stop the mine because they didn’t have title to the land.
Public Land
Most of the ground in the Amazon is owned by the government, according toImazon, a Belem-based nonprofit group. Incra gave descendants of Mundurucu and Muirapinima Indians the right to use the land in 1981 without granting titles to the families. Incra certified the land as a federal reserve in November 2005.
Brazil’s laws regarding property deeds in the Amazon have always been lax, Brunet says, because until recently no one has challenged them.
“Those people don’t own the land,” says Alcoa’s Tiniti Matsumoto Jr., who has run the mine since 2005 and has worked at Alcoa for 40 years. “That land issue is Incra’s problem, not Alcoa’s.”
Alcoa doesn’t own the property either, prosecutor Moraes says.
“Alcoa simply assumed it was authorized to mine an area that is protected, where people live off the land,” Moraes says.
Soon after Alcoa received approval from the state to build the mine, Bricio Lima, the company’s community affairs director, went from house to house, asking families to cede part of their land. In the end, Alcoa secured the right of way through land where 81 families live.
No Choice
Bentes, the farmer whose stream is now filled with brown silt, says Lima told his family and their neighbors that residents had no choice but to cooperate because Alcoa had approval from the state.
Lima said Alcoa offered the family 23,000 reais, which equals about 17 months of the median income in Brazil, to use 2.5 hectares of their land, Bentes says. He says he agreed to the deal because he had no choice.
“He told us the railroad would go through our land whether we accepted the offer or not,” Bentes says, as he prepares to roast half a deer he hunted for two days with a friend.
Alcoa wanted to pay them something, even though it wasn’t required by law, Lima says.
“There was nothing forcing us to pay any compensation,” says Lima, who confirms Bentes’s account of their discussions.
‘The Right Thing’
Brunet says his agency plans to grant land titles to local residents, allowing them to request royalty payments from Alcoa’s mine production.
Matsumoto, 59, a Brazilian of Japanese descent, says the company is willing to pay people who live in the reserve part of its royalty payments to the government -- 1.5 percent of the mine’s revenue -- if that’s what officials want.
“We want to be here for at least 70 years, so of course we want to do the right thing,” he says.
Alcoa is paying Conservation International, an Arlington- based nonprofit group, $100,000 a year to create a trust fund to finance the preservation of 10 million hectares of parks and preserves around Juruti.
Since 2005, the company has spent 10 million reais to improve roads and build schools, water treatment units, a health-care center and a government building in Juruti, Alcoa says.
Replanting Trees
In 2008, the company commissioned a poll of 600 people in the region, finding that 61 percent said the mine project had improved their lives. Two-thirds of those questioned didn’t live close to the mine, Alcoa says.
Matsumoto says Alcoa will replant every tree it destroys. It will send forestry engineers and biologists ahead of the excavators to catalog plants and animals in all of the jungle Alcoa cuts down.
“When we start planting trees at the mine, we want to make it richer than the original forest,” Matsumoto says.
Patricia Elias, a forestry expert for the Union of Concerned Scientists, says Matsumoto’s goal is impossible to achieve.
“It would take centuries for trees to grow to their original density and height -- and it would never be better than virgin forest,” she says. “It’s of greater value in combating climate change to avoid deforestation in the first place.”
‘Just Doesn’t Work’
Andre Clewell, a botanist in Ellenton, Florida, who is a consultant on restoration of mines, says it’s difficult to quickly restore tropical trees.
“You can try to grow 200-year-old trees in 50 years, but it just doesn’t work,” Clewell, 75, says. “And some of it never comes back.”
About 160 kilometers from the Juruti mine, green fields of soybeans stretch to the horizon near Santarem, flanked by narrow stands of the rain forest that once covered all of the area. Scorched trees lie on the ground at the far end of Edno Cortezia’s farm, where workers set fire to the forest to make way for crops.
Cortezia says he’s growing soybeans where the jungle once stood because Cargill built a port 30 kilometers away at the confluence of the Amazon and Tapajos rivers.
“We came here because of the port,” Cortezia says. Cargill’s Champi says the company will remove Cortezia as a supplier if it can confirm the deforestation.
Pot-Holed Highways
Before Cargill built its port, there were no soybean farms near Santarem, says Marcus Bistene, chief of enforcement at Ibama’s Santarem office. Pontes, the federal prosecutor, says Cargill bypassed federal environmental law to build a port without properly studying how it would affect the Amazon.
In the mid-1990s, Cargill, the world’s largest agricultural company by revenue, was looking for an alternative to trucking grains down pot-holed highways from the fields of Mato Grosso state in western Brazil to the ports of Santos and Paranagua, 2,000 kilometers south.
They set their sights on a highway through the heart of the soybean belt from the Amazon to Santarem, Champi says. At the time, Cortezia farmed land in the state of Mato Grosso, near the southern border of the Amazon. He says Cargill officials came to town, urging farmers to move to Santarem, where it would be less expensive to grow soybeans.
This season, he’s harvesting soybeans on his farm near Santarem that he plans to sell to Cargill.
EPA Brushes
Cargill has 160,000 employees in 67 countries and reported $120 billion in revenue in 2008. Founded in 1855 by William Cargill, it’s still primarily family owned. It has been in Brazil since 1965, when it started producing and selling hybrid corn seeds. Within two decades, Cargill grew into Brazil’s top trader and exporter of soybeans and oilseed.
Like Alcoa, Cargill has had brushes with environmental regulators.
In the U.S., the EPA has cited the company for polluting rivers and killing fish populations. In 2005, Cargill signed an agreement with the EPA and the Justice Department settling charges that the company had underestimated air pollution at corn and soybean processing plants in 13 states.
Cargill agreed to spend $130 million to reduce pollution at 27 plants, pay a fine of $1.6 million and finance $3.5 million in environmental programs.
‘Long History’
Cargill standards for protecting the environment are stricter than the EPA’s in some cases, spokeswoman Lori Johnson says.
“Cargill has a long history of voluntarily reducing its emissions and other environmental impacts,” Johnson says.
In 2000, Pontes filed suit in federal court to halt construction of Cargill’s port, arguing that the company hadn’t done a proper environmental study. Cargill contested the suit, saying it had approval from Para’s environmental agency.
As the case was pending, Cargill finished the port in 2003. In March 2007, a Brazilian federal judge shut down the port until the company did a comprehensive environmental study. Cargill won a reversal of that decision on appeal.
In 2006, Greenpeace reported it had traced soybeans from the port to illegally deforested land. Since then, Cargill has refused to buy soybeans grown on newly deforested land, Champi says. Three days ago, Cargill and other grain exporter in Brazil extended until July 2010 a commitment not to buy soybeans from farms that were cleared from the Amazon since 2006.
74 Million Cows
Ranchers, more than anyone else, have illegally flattened thousands of square kilometers of publicly owned rain forest to create pastures for cattle, Pontes says. More than 74 million cows graze in the Amazon today, covering a combined area larger than Spain.
Ranchers are proud of what they have done to improve the local economy. Ataides Gomes de Oliveira, a foreman on the Itacaiunas ranch near Xinguara, walks among a wasteland of scorched logs and splintered stumps. He stops as cattle appear amid the ragged ferns and saplings.
“There are 6,000 cows here, where there used to be unproductive jungle,” he says. Sao Paulo-based Agropecuaria Santa Barbara Xinguara SA, which owns Itacaiunas, says it’s not responsible for managing the ranch and has never illegally cleared jungle.
McDonald’s gets some of the beef for its Big Macs from a meatpacker supplied by ranches cleared from the Amazon, cattle sales permits show.
Deforesting Fines
McDonald’s supplier of hamburger patties in Brazil, Braslo Produtos de Carne Ltda. in Sao Paulo, has bought beef from its parent, Marfrig Alimentos. Four ranchers that supply Marfrig have been fined a total of 13.5 million reais for illegally clearing the rain forest, public records show.
Marfrig has never bought “regularly” from ranches that don’t follow Brazil’s environmental law, says Ricardo Florence, director of planning and investor relations. The company demands its suppliers follow all laws. It won’t buy from suppliers that Ibama has placed on a list of “embargoed” ranches cited for illegal deforestation, Florence says.
The ranchers who were fined aren’t on that list, so Marfrig has no way of knowing their background on deforestation, he says.
“The Marfrig Group does not buy from suppliers that contribute to deforestation of the Amazon,” Florence says.
McDonald’s Policy
Oak Brook, Illinois-based McDonald’s, which has had a policy of not buying beef from deforested land since 1989, says it relies on its suppliers to follow the law.
“Every McDonald’s beef supplier has signed and affirmed its compliance with this policy,” says Bob Langert, McDonald’s vice president of corporate social responsibility. “They are aware that McDonald’s will immediately cease accepting raw materials from any facility that is found to source cattle for McDonald’s from within the Amazon.”
Marfrig complies with McDonald’s policy, Florence says.
JBS, the world’s biggest meat company, has purchased cattle from fined ranchers. JBS owns Swift & Co. and part of Smithfield Foods Inc. in the U.S. and has nine plants in the Amazon. Kraft Foods Inc.’s division in Italy and a unit of H.J. Heinz Co. have bought beef from JBS, according to sales and export records.
The number of slaughterhouses in the Amazon has tripled to 87 since 2004, as international meat exporters expanded into the rain forest, prosecutors say.
‘It’s the Meatpackers’
“If you want to know who is financing the deforestation, it’s the meatpackers,” Ibama director Evaristo says.
Angela Garcia, director of environmental affairs at JBS, says the company counts on government enforcement records to ensure cattle come from land that wasn’t illegally deforested.
“We’re not in enforcement,” she says. “We don’t have the resources. I hope the ranches are complying with the law, but I cannot say whether they are.”
Evaristo says virtually all Amazon ranchers built pastures on land that was illegally deforested.
“These are people who operate with 100 percent illegality,” he says. “They steal public land, destroy the rain forest, plant grass and let the cows graze until they’re fat enough to sell.”
In Sao Felix do Xingu, the municipality in the Amazon with the most cattle, only one ranch out of hundreds has a license. On June 1, Ibama and federal prosecutors filed suit against 21 cattle ranches, accusing them of illegally deforesting 150,000 hectares of rain forest.
Stopped Buying Beef
Prosecutors say that meatpacker Bertin sold beef from cattle that had been raised on illegal ranches to 41 of its customers --including Carrefour and Wal-Mart. Prosecutors sent a letter to all Bertin customers recommending they stop buying meat that comes from deforested land.
By June 19, Carrefour, Wal-Mart and 33 other buyers had told Azeredo that they had stopped buying from Bertin and other meatpackers named in the lawsuit.
Bertin says it stopped buying from 14 ranches named in the suit and signed an agreement with prosecutors to develop tighter controls to ensure cattle suppliers follow the law.
“We’ve suspended cattle purchases from deforested ranches and will help ranchers stop deforesting the Amazon and replant areas that have been devastated,” Bertin spokeswoman Simone Soares says.
‘A Matter of Cost’
Bentonville, Arkansas-based Wal-Mart says it wants to buy only beef raised on ranches that follow the law. The company had suspected that ranchers were destroying the Amazon, says Daniela De Fiori, Wal-Mart’s vice president for sustainability in Brazil.
“The truth is, Brazil’s retail sectors rely on these companies,” De Fiori says. “And it’s a matter of cost.”
On July 17, Wal-Mart launched a global initiative to urge all of its suppliers to assess and label the environmental impact of all their products, going back to the source of raw materials.
Spokespeople for Carrefour, Heinz, Kraft and car companies Ford, GM and Mercedes say they have policies against buying products from deforested land and requiring suppliers to assure them they follow the law.
Leather producer Eagle Ottawa, which is a unit of Whitehall, Michigan-based Everett Smith Group Ltd., says it’s satisfied with Bertin’s agreement with prosecutors to stop buying from illegally deforested ranches.
Shrinking Amazon
In Juruti, where Alcoa has its bauxite mine, the jungle is dotted with mahogany, Brazil nut trees and marble-textured angelin-pedra trees. These hardwoods can grow to almost 50 meters.
Under the thick canopy of that timber are giant ferns and palms. This Amazonian vegetation, which has long absorbed the world’s carbon dioxide, is now shrinking at a rate of 163 square kilometers a week, exacerbating the global warming that threatens to wreak havoc worldwide.
Lima, Alcoa’s community relations manager, a heavyset man with thinning hair, drives a pickup truck on the freshly cleared land for the mine. The rain forest gives way to a 700- meter-wide muddy pit that steams in the sun after a cloudburst.
Jungle topsoil and clay have been stripped away, exposing bauxite 15 meters down. Dump trucks are lined up, waiting for work to begin.
Lima points to the pit, saying that beginning in late August, excavators will fill trucks with 90-ton hauls of bauxite once mining starts. Bulldozers will move ahead, clearing the rain forest to make way for heavy machinery to advance in a mining trench 50 meters wide.
Train Sits Empty
In a clearing a few kilometers away, conveyor belts lead to a tower where clay and other waste material will be washed from the ore. Not far from the pit, a train sits empty, ready to be loaded with bauxite.
Alcoa has already torn down 900 hectares of rain forest, Lima says. Within 30 years, the mine will consume more than 10 times that much jungle, according to the company.
Bentes and his family show where Alcoa workers strip the rain forest.
“We don’t know many things, and we are very simple people,” Bentes says, adding that he does understand the value of economic development in Brazil. “But they should find a way to do that without destroying the rain forest,” he says. “That is not right.”
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601170&sid=aEmubrLsu.ro
China vows ‘reasonable’ result in iron ore talks
BEIJING, July 31 – The China Iron and Steel Association vowed on Friday to keep pressing for a “reasonable” result in annual iron ore price negotiations, saying that excess imports had hindered this year’s marathon talks.
“First, the talks are still on and we are still actively pushing them forward,” said Luo Bingsheng, Cisa vice-chairman, speaking at a press conference following the group’s annual two-day industry meeting.
“We hope to see a reasonable result,” he added.
China’s talks with BHP Billiton, Rio Tinto andVale have already been clouded by Rio’s rejection of a further tie-up with Chinese aluminium company Chinalco, and the country’s detention of four Shanghai-based Rio employees for allegedly using “abnormal methods” to obtain state and commercial secrets.
To prevent its negotiating position from being undermined still further, Cisa is now urging the Chinese steel industry to put its own “chaotic” house in order, and is calling for new rules that will force all Chinese mills and ore traders to adhere to a single ”unified” benchmark price agreed with foreign miners.
“We hope that the term prices negotiated with miners can become a benchmark unified price for China. The import agencies can charge agency fees,” Mr Luo said.
He said under the new proposals, trading companies could charge a 3-5 percent commission on top of the agreed term prices.
After taking over negotiations from Baoshan Iron and Steel following last year’s crushing 65-96 per cent contract price rises, Cisa promised to unite the industry behind its efforts to secure more favourable terms from the foreign miners, but control over China’s fragmented steel sector has proved to be impossible.
The association’s position was hurt by record monthly iron ore imports beginning in March and driven mainly, it said, by smaller mills and trading companies.
“Recently the biggest difficulty has been small and medium-sized mills and traders importing excessive amounts of iron ore,” said Cisa secretary general Shan Shanghua, cited in a Friday report by the Xinhua news agency.
China should also try to ensure domestic iron ore output remains stable, thereby reducing the need for imports, Mr Luo said at Friday’s press conference.
The association, together with the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, has also been working on rules aimed at punishing those enterprises guilty of “disregarding market signals” by overproducing steel during the economic downturn.
The ministry said earlier this year that total crude steel production should stand at about 460m tonnes in 2009, down 8 per cent compared to last year. However, Cisa now expects output to exceed 500m tonnes, a level similar to 2008.
Cisa has also fought hard to prevent China’s steel mills from signing their own contract deals with the big miners, claiming that only its own negotiated price settlement will be valid.
Limiting iron ore import licenses to just a select few enterprises is another one of the proposals on the table, with plans to revoke the vast majority of the existing 112 permits reported by the Economic Observer newspaper to be at an advanced stage.
Cisa has softened its attempt to squeeze a 40-45 percent cut from foreign miners, but it is still holding out for a better deal than the 33 percent reduction agreed earlier by Japanese counterparts with Rio Tinto.
“We are against stirring up prices and market monopolies, and we hope we can reach a win-win solution for both sides,” Mr Luo said.
He wouldn’t say whether or not either side had set a new deadline for the end of the talks, but stressed China wanted to see “stable and healthy international iron ore trade.”
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/e96caa9c-7d91-11de-8f8d-00144feabdc0.html?nclick_check=1
Report: Land mine contamination vast in Vietnam
By BEN STOCKING (AP) – 5 hours ago
HANOI, Vietnam — More than one-third of the land in six central Vietnamese provinces remains contaminated with land mines and unexploded bombs from the Vietnam War, according to a study released Friday.
Nearly 35 years after the war's end, Vietnamese civilians are still routinely killed and maimed by leftover mines and other explosives. Vietnam estimates that more than 42,000 people have been killed in such accidents since 1975.
The study by the Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation and Vietnam's ministry of defense provides the most detailed information to date about the amount and location of unexploded ordinance littering a region that saw some of the heaviest fighting and bombardment during the war.
The survey was the result of close collaboration between the United States and Vietnam on one of the most sensitive legacies of the conflict.
In addition to mapping unexploded mines and ordinance, the project, which the U.S. government provided $2 million to finance, involved clearing 3,345 acres (1,354 hectares) of land in 1,361 communities across the six provinces.
But the study also underlines the scope of the mine-clearing work that remains to be done.
Vietnam's Ministry of Defense estimates 16.3 million acres (6.6 million hectares) are still contaminated across the country, said Thao Nguyen, the Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation's country director.
"The clearing of unexploded ordinance and land mines is far from finished," Nguyen said.
U.S. Ambassador Michael Michalak said the survey will help set priorities for future clearance work.
"Eliminating residual explosives from past conflicts is an important issue for the people of Vietnam, as it is for the United States," he said.
The U.S. has provided $46 million to help with mine-clearing efforts in Vietnam since 1989, he said.
The study looked in detail at victims in the provinces of Quang Tri, Quang Binh, Thua Thien Hue, Quang Ngai, Nghe An and Ha Tinh.
Thirty-four percent were hurt while scavenging for unexploded bombs to sell as scrap metal; 27 percent were farming or herding livestock; and 21 percent were playing or tampering with the bombs.
The study found the most heavily contaminated provinces were Quang Binh and neighboring Quang Tri, the site of the former demilitarized zone during the war.
Since the war ended, nearly 7,000 people have been killed or injured by leftover ordinance in Quang Tri and 6,000 in Quang Binh, the study found.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5g1fYeOKeqV8ZtD5bO79e31LABu6gD99P8BSG0
Ganga threatened by increasing pollution
ANI 31 July 2009, 11:13am IST
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HARIDWAR/DEHRADUN: Revered by hundreds and thousands, the Ganga River is fighting for survival seriously threatened by alarming rise of various
pollutants.
Increasing sewage from the drains, polythene bags and other garbage choke the river. The pollution levels have risen largely in Ganga over the past few years inspite of a government body.
"More and more devotees throng the Ganga, but there are no arrangements for anything. Though there are provisions for devotees, but the administration and the Ganga Pollution Board formed during the tenure of former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, has been doing nothing to check the pollution level in Ganga. We have been living in Haridwar since childhood, but we haven't seen any initiative to clean Ganga," said Kailash, a resident in Haridwar.
Apart from this, big drains opening into Ganga also add to the pollution levels in the sacred river.
"All through the course of the river, so many drains mix into Ganga water. It is polluting water badly. The people are losing faith in the administration. The water has become unfit for drinking. The government should take strict steps to control the pollution level in Ganga," said Dev Dutt, another resident.
While the rising pollution levels have alarmed the environmentalists, the government body that has been constituted to check the pollution in Ganga maintains that they are doing their best to save the river.
"There are 19 big drains in Haridwar, of which 15 have been tapped. Work is being conducted on other drains as well. We hope to complete the work on them by next Kumbh (an annual fair)" said RC Gupta, general manager, Ganga Pollution Board.
According to reports, around 12 billion rupees have gone towards Ganga cleaning project.
The government has set up the National Ganga River basin Authority (NGRBA) to ensure effective abatement of pollution and conservation of Ganga river.
Despite tall claims and numerous efforts taken by the government, the state of the river remains the same with no improvement in the pollution levels.
Timely action and stringent steps are the immediate need of hour to save the river from further damage.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/NEWS/Environment/Pollution/Ganga-threatened-by-increasing-pollution-/articleshow/4840599.cms
Alaska Natives try to halt proposed Pebble Mine
Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times
The Pile River flows into Lake Iliamna at the base of the Alaskan Peninsula, headwaters of the Bristol Bay region.
A coalition of village corporations and others files suit to put an end to drilling and exploration for a copper and gold mine above Bristol Bay -- a sanctuary for wild salmon.
By Kim Murphy
July 31, 2009
Reporting from Seattle -- It has always been a match made in peril: One of the biggest copper and gold mines in the world perched in the watershed above Bristol Bay, Alaska -- the last, best refuge for millions of Pacific wild salmon.
The proposed Pebble Mine would dwarf all the others operating in the Alaskan wilderness and generate up to 9 billion tons of ore, most of which would have to be sifted and disposed of near the ponds and streams that feed into Bristol Bay.
•
2007 coverage: Bristol Bay on the brink
It also would generate hundreds of jobs in troubled southwestern Alaska, and as much as $300-billion worth of copper and gold.
In an attempt to head off the project before it gets too big to stop, a coalition of Alaska Native village corporations and others filed suit this week in Anchorage, charging that the state was violating its Constitution by allowing drilling and other exploration to proceed without full environmental review.
The mine would cover 15 square miles, with a 1,600-foot-deep open pit stretching across two square miles. Early development proposals have called for holding the hazardous tailing behind massive dams -- one 740 feet high, the other 450 feet high. The exact plans won't be known until 2010 or 2011, when Pebble Partnership submits its development permit applications to the state.
Conservationists worry that the millions of dollars spent on exploration while officials conduct public hearings and await the environmental impact statement will give the project political momentum that even Alaska's powerful fishing industry would find hard to fight.
The lawsuit invoked an article of the Alaska Constitution that requires hearings and analyses to determine whether state-owned natural resources are being managed for the common public good. Specifically, the suit argued that Alaska should conduct studies to determine whether exploration at the mine was affecting other users of public land, water, fish and wildlife.
"This kind of activity is being treated . . . as if there's some guy out there with a mule, a pick ax and a shovel turning over a little bit of rock and looking for a nugget. But this is in essence industrial-scale activity," Steve Cotton, executive director of the public interest law firm Trustees for Alaska, said at a news conference in Anchorage.
Representatives of Nunamta Aulukestai, a coalition of eight native village corporations that filed the lawsuit, said they already were seeing effects from the exploration. Fewer caribou linger in the area, they said in court papers, and waste from exploratory drilling has trickled into streams and ponds.
"What we would like to see right now is for everyone to take a step back and look at all the potential negative impacts associated with a development this large in an area that's incredibly sensitive and extremely important to a lot of people in this state," said Tim Bristol, director of Trout Unlimited in Alaska, which has opposed the mine but is not a plaintiff in the lawsuit.
"You have a giant open pit proposed; you're going to have billions of tons of waste rock, 100 miles of access road; a deep-water port is going to have to be constructed; there's going to have to be a source of power, incredible amounts of water to charge the system and store the waste; and you have to think about how to treat that waste in perpetuity . . . in a region that right now is sort of this wild salmon wilderness," Bristol said.
Trout Unlimited and other conservationists back legislation that would require a separate set of reviews for the Pebble Mine, given its proximity to Bristol Bay, which generates a third of the state's commercial fishing revenue. The state Legislature won't have a chance to act on that until it re-convenes in January.
State officials have said that plenty of studies would be done once Pebble applies for its development permits. At the moment, they added, exploration is going on at hundreds of mining claims, large and small, across the state, and Alaska law does not require formal studies or public hearings.
"There are 400 to 500 of these in place, statewide, at any one time," said Tom Crafford, mining coordinator at the Alaska Department of Natural Resources. "Absolutely, once a project applies for development permits, then that triggers a whole host of permit requirements, public notice requirements, comment periods, both state and federal."
Pebble Partnership Chief Executive John Shively said there already has been full inspection by state and federal agencies, including the state Department of Fish and Game and the federal Environmental Protection Agency. "So it's not like there's no oversight," he told KTUU-TV in Anchorage, "or that the public doesn't have the ability to look at what our program is and to go tell the agencies what they think about it."
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-pebble-mine31-2009jul31,0,7020544.story
U.K. Stocks Fluctuate as Mining Shares Climb, Shell Retreats
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By Sarah Jones
July 31 (Bloomberg) -- U.K. stocks swung between gains and losses as better-than-expected results from Anglo American Plc and higher base metal prices were offset by a sell-off in energy companies.
Anglo American, owner of stakes in the world’s biggest diamond and platinum producers, advanced 1.6 percent. Royal Dutch Shell Plc lost 1.7 percent as European rivals Total SA and Eni SpA reported a drop in profit.
The benchmark FTSE 100 Index fell 9.62, or 0.2 percent, to 4,621.99 at 9:19 a.m. in London, after rising as much as 0.3 percent and tumbling as much as 0.5 percent. The FTSE All-Share Index was little changed while Ireland’sISEQ Index gained 0.5 percent.
The FTSE 100 has surged 12 percent since July 10 after companies from Goldman Sachs Group Inc. to Roche Holding AG posted results that exceeded estimates.
Anglo American jumped 1.6 percent to 1,935.5 pence after the mining company reported so-called underlying earnings of 91 cents a share, beating the median forecast of 67 cents a share in a Bloomberg survey of six analysts.
Rio Tinto Group, the third biggest, gained 1.5 percent to 2,499.5 pence as copper jumped to the highest in almost 10 months and aluminum headed for its best month in more than 21 years on optimism a global economic recovery will revive demand for industrial metals.
Xstrata Plc, the world’s fourth-largest copper producer, increased 3.7 percent to 799.4 pence.
Shell, Europe’s largest oil company, fell 1.7 percent to 1,573 pence, while smaller rival BG Group Plc declined 2.1 percent to 1,024 pence.
France’s Total today reported a 54 percent drop in second- quarter earnings and Italy’s Eni posted a 76 percent fall for the same period, as the global recession eroded energy demand, causing crude prices to drop.
To contact the reporter on this story: Sarah Jones in London atsjones35@bloomberg.net.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601102&sid=ayg8.iEYwm0Q
Other News
Funds relief for NREGS worker’s kids
SUDHIR KUMAR MISHRA
Ranchi, July 30: Justice delayed is not always justice denied. Though it comes at a price they hadn’t bargained for, a better future awaits 14-year-old Jhola Mundu — the eldest son of NREGS worker Turia Munda whose tragic death created ripples across the state last year — and his three siblings.
One-and-a-half years after Munda hanged himself to death frustrated over not being paid despite labouring for days, the governor’s advisory council today announced a Rs 10-lakh package for the minor dependants of the rural job scheme beneficiary.
Jholu, his sister Radhika (10) and two younger brothers, Pushu (6) and Somra (2), will be entitled to free education up to Class X. The state will also sponsor their higher studies if they so desire. Else, they will be given government jobs.
“A bank account will be opened for them. For now, it will be handled by their maternal uncle under the supervision of the Ranchi deputy commissioner. Initially, they will be allowed to spend only the interest amount. Once adults, the principal amount will be equally distributed among them,” said D.K. Saxena, special secretary, cabinet co-ordination department.
A native of Gitildih village in the Bundu block of Ranchi district, Munda was engaged for 23 days in 2006 under NREGS to dig a pond. He was paid Rs 1,314 for 18 days, but never got the remaining Rs 365 despite repeated petitions to officials responsible for implementing the scheme.
As days went by, feeding five mouths at home became increasingly difficult. In November 2007, Munda’s wife fell victim to malnutrition. Her death was a severe blow to the daily wage earner who had little clue how to raise his children, the youngest being barely a few months old. Munda renewed his appeals for NREGS payment, but in vain. On the night of January 23, 2008, he hanged himself from a berry tree outside their house.
His death sent shockwaves across the state, prompting the administration to take action against 10 Bundu block officials. The rural development department asked the NREGS commissioner to investigate allegations of negligence and submit a report. The officials were merely transferred following confusion over rumours that Munda had not committed suicide and had been hanged by Maoists.
Saxena said the package announced by the advisory council mandated proper rehabilitation of Munda’s minor dependants. While Jholu, studying in a residential school in Bundu, will receive education free till Class X, Radhika will be admitted to Kasturba Gandhi Awasiya Vidyalaya. Pushu, too, will be admitted to a school while Somra will stay with Radhika at her hostel.
http://www.telegraphindia.com/1090731/jsp/jharkhand/story_11301678.jsp
NREGS implementation wins praises
;Statesman News Service
GANGTOK, 30 JULY: An independent evaluation study conducted by the Indian Institute of Management, Shillong (IIM-S), has rated the implementation of the NREGS in Sikkim as impressive in comparison to other parts of India.
The study, conducted on behalf of the Union ministry of rural development, Government of India, has reported that all Gram Panchayats in Sikkim have implemented this scheme and works are undertaken in all the 163 Panchayat units and 891 wards.
With the NREG Act having been passed in September 2005, the NREGS-Sikkim was implemented on February, 2006 in the North district in the First Phase, and in the First Phase from April 2007 in the South and East districts. The Third Phase began in April 2008 in the West district. During 2006-07 Sikkim received Rs 4.56 crore, in 2007-08 Rs 14.32 crore and in 2008-09 Rs 48.10 crore. It is also informed that till date, 69,798 job cards have been issued to the rural households of Sikkim, 40.76 lakh of person-days have been generated, 2,581 works have been taken up and 96,131 households were provided employment.
According to Mr Anil Ganeriwala, secretary, state rural management and development department (RMDD), more than 170 persons have been provided employment in the NREGA cell. “Within this financial year we have already taken initiative to provide employment to at least 50 educated unemployed local youths,” he informed.
To provide help and redressal of complaints pertaining to the NREGS, a toll free helpline - number 7979 - has been functional in the RMDD head office here.
It is also learnt that in view of the good performance of Sikkim, the ministry of rural development has hiked the fund allocation to the tune of Rs 75.28 crore for the year 2009-10 under the NREGA for the state of Sikkim.
http://www.thestatesman.net/page.news.php?clid=10&theme=&usrsess=1&id=262914
At last, fillip for tribal land rights
SANTOSH K. KIRO
Ranchi, July 30: Jharkhand has stepped up efforts to ensure that the over 8,000 tribals who have applied for land rights under a 2008 legislation of the Centre got their ownership papers by next month.
Concerned over the state’s dismal record in implementing the Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, that was meant to provide ownership rights to those who have been farming on forestland, state chief secretary A.K. Basu has asked all deputy commissioners to clear all pending applications and issue pattas (land ownership documents) for distribution on Independence Day.
Since January 1, 2008, when the act came into force, DCs have so far received 8,826 applications from villagers, against an estimated 90,000 beneficiaries in the state. So far, only 165 applications had been verified, pattas made and distributed. Basu now wants the remaining applications processed by August 15.
The Telegraph had reported on July 5 how the state had made little effort to publicise the provisions of the landmark legislation that would fulfil a long cherished ambition of tribals across the country.
At a review meeting conducted by cabinet secretary K.M. Chandrashekhar on June 29, he was aghast at Basu’s admission that little effort had been made by deputy commissioners to spread the word about the act, that too in a state which prides itself for its tribal heritage.
“By the third week of June, only 4,900 applications had been received. However, after the cabinet secretary’s review meeting, the DCs did expedite operations. But, still the performance was poor,” said tribal welfare commissioner Nitin Madan Kulkarni said.
Hence, the chief secretary intervened and set an October deadline to complete the entire process.
The act was notified on January 1, 2008 though it had been passed by the Parliament on 18 December, 2006. However, the new law expected to set right the historic injustices meted out to tribals and others living in forests, was very poorly implemented here.
Several districts hadn’t even bothered to set up forest rights committees that would identify beneficiaries and refer applications to further verifications.
“Implementation of the act is very slow. We have been asking officials to speed up the process, but they do not listen to us,” complained Sanika Oraon of Latehar district.
Latehar DC Rahul Purwar admitted to the lapses. “We have been able to form forest rights committees in only 200 of 750 villages. Now, I am speeding things up,” he promised .
Except for Dumka and Pakur where some efforts had been taken to implement the act, no other district has made any sincere effort.
According to Kulkarni, DCs had been told to hold meetings of gram sabhas in all villages on August 10. There, application forms would be verified and sent to the divisional-level committee for further verification. “The division and district level committees have been given 15 days to complete their work,” he said. “The entire process has to be completed by October as per the chief secretary’s order.”
http://www.telegraphindia.com/1090731/jsp/jharkhand/story_11303745.jsp
Delhi to have 30% green cover by 2011: CM
PTI 28 July 2009, 06:48pm IST
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NEW DELHI: Delhi, considered as one of the greenest capitals in the world, will have 30 per cent areas under green cover in the next two years,
Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit said on Tuesday.
Speaking at a function after inaugurating a plantation drive, Dikshit said her government was making sincere efforts to further extend the green cover from the current 20 per cent to 30 per per cent by 2011.
Dikshit complimented efforts of school children in making plantation drive of her government successful. She also complimented Territorial Army for its contribution in extending forest cover in Bhatti Mines.
The Chief Minister said the government has started construction of a wall around the Ridge area to protect its green cover.
As part of its efforts to extend the green cover, Delhi Government is developing new forest in a 17.68 hectare land.
The government has decided to plant at least 12 lakh saplings this year.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/NEWS/City/Delhi/Delhi-to-have-30-green-cover-by-2011-CM/articleshow/4830789.cms
Checking pollution at thermal power plants
________________________________________
17:41 IST
Lok Sabha
The ash generated in thermal power plants is being arrested by installing high efficiency electro static precipitator (ESP) with high stacks for wider spread of ash particles so that the particulate emission from power plants is within the emission limit prescribed by Central Pollution Control Board. The fly ash collected in ESPs is disposed off either in the designated ash pond or made use of in various applications.
As per the information compiled by Central Electricity Authority, total fly ash generated from all thermal power plants is about 116 million tones for 2008-09, out of which about 66 million tonnes was utilized in various modes of utilization and remaining 50 million tonnes was stored in ash ponds by the plants.
As per the notification issued by Ministry of Environment & Forests, the new Thermal Power Stations are to achieve 100% fly ash utilization in a time bound programme of 9 years. The electrostatic precipitator provided for arresting fly ash are upgraded in existing thermal power plants to meet the emission stipulations as prescribed by Ministry of Environment and Forests/Central Pollution Control Board.
To minimize the dust nuisance outside the thermal power boundary, 50 Meter wide green belt is being provided all around the plant periphery and to gainfully utilize the fly ash collected from the ESPs, dry fly ash collection system are being provided.
This information was given by Shri Bharatsinh Solanki, Minister of State, Ministry of Power in a written reply to a question by Shri Hansraj G. Ahir in the Lok Sabha today.
PRA/SKK
http://pib.nic.in/release/release.asp?relid=51345
Foreign Assistance for Rural Development Projects
________________________________________
16:26 IST
23 projects spread over 17 states related to rural development and poverty alleviation are being implemented with foreign assistance in the country. The agencies include international financial institutions like World Bank, Asian Development Bank in addition to the Government of Japan, Germany and UK. The list of international financial institutions assisting the Government of India in rural development and poverty alleviation include
IFAD - International Fund for Agricultural Development
ADB - Asian Development Bank
DFID - Department for International Development
IDA - International Development Association &
IBRD - International Bank for Reconstruction and Development
The details of projects in Rural Development Sector being implemented with foreign assistance as provided by the Department of Economic Affairs is enclosed at Annexure.
Annexure : Rural Development Projects with Foreign assistance in India
S. No. Project’s Name State/Central Donor Agency Date of Signing Date of Closing Loan Amount
1. Additional Financing – Andhra Pradesh Rural Poverty Reduction Andhra Pradesh World Bank 25.1.2007 30.9.2009 US$ 65 million (IDA)
2. Bihar Rural Livelihoods Project Bihar World Bank 9.8.2007 31.10.2012 US$ 63 million (IDA)
3. Chhattisgarh District Poverty Initiatives Project Chhattisgarh World Bank 18.8.2003 31.3.2010 US$ 92.56 million (IDA)
4. 2nd Madhya Pradesh District Poverty Initiatives Project * Madhya Pradesh World Bank 20.7.2009 31.12.2014 US$ 100 million (IDA)
5. Orissa Rural Livelihoods Project Orissa World Bank 27.1.2009 31.12.2013 US$ 82.4 million (IDA)
6. Rural Roads Project Himachal Pradesh, Rajasthan, Jharkhand and Uttar Pradesh World Bank 8.11.2004 31.3.2010 US$ 300 (IDA) /
US$ 99.5 million (IBRD)
7. Tamil Nadu Empowerment & Poverty Reduction Project Tamil Nadu World Bank 14.9.2005 30.9.2011 US$ 120 (IDA)
8. Strengthening Rural Credit Cooperative Central sector World Bank 2.11.2007 30.6.2012 US$ 300 million (IDA)/
US$ 300 million (IBRD
9. 2nd Karnataka Rural Water Supply and Sanitation Project Karnataka World Bank 8.3.2002 31.12.2009 US$ 168.6 million (IDA)
10. Maharashtra Rural Water Supply and Sanitation Project Maharashtra World Bank 30.9.2003 30.9.2009 US$ 199.1 million (IDA)
11. Uttaranchal Rural Water Supply and Sanitation Project Uttaranchal World Bank 16.10.2006 30.6.2012 US$ 129.1 million (IDA)
12. Punjab Rural Water Supply and Sanitation Project Punjab World Bank 26.2.2007 31.3.2012 US$ 161 million (IDA)
13. Livelihood Improvement Project for the Himalayas Uttarakhandand Meghalaya IFAD 20.2.2004 31.12.2012 US$ 39.91 million
14. Mitigating Poverty in Western Rajasthan Rajasthan IFAD 17.10.2008 31.12.2014 US$ 30.3 million
15. Rural Roads Sector I Project Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh ADB 25.11.2004 30.6.2009 US$ 400 million
16. Rural Roads Sector II Investment Program (Project 1) Assam, Orissa and West Bengal ADB 29.8.2006 30.6.2009 US$ 180 million
17. Rural Roads Sector II Investment Program (Project 2) Orissa ADB 28.3.2008 31.12.2009 US$ 53.55 million
18. Rural Roads Sector II Investment Program (Project 3) Assam and West Bengal ADB 10.11.2008 31.12.2010 US$ 130 million
19. Maharashtra Rural Water Supply Project Maharashtra Germany 28.12.2000 31.12.2009 € 23.846 million
20. Madhya Pradesh Rural Livelihoods Project – Phase 2 Madhya Pradesh DFID 9.7.2007 30.6.2012 € 45 million
21. Western Orissa Rural Livelihoods Project Orissa DFID 23.7.1999 31.7.2009 € 32.75 million
22. AttappadyWasteland Comprehensive Environmental Conservation Project Kerala Japan 25.1.1996 26.3.2010 JPY 5112 million
23. HogenakkalWater Supply and FluorosisMitigation Project Tamil Nadu Japan 10.3.2008 25.3.2017 JPY 22387 million
* yet to be declared effective.
The Government of India has a monitoring mechanism for externally aided projects. Projects are checked against readiness indicators before they are launched. During implementation, the projects are monitored through joint review meetings periodically. State level portfolio reviews and site visits are also undertaken from time to time. This was informed by the Union Minister Of State for Rural Development Shree Pradeep Jain Aditya in reply to a written question in Lok Sabha today.
http://pib.nic.in/release/release.asp?relid=51328
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