Panel to study INO's environment impact

The project proposal is to construct an underground laboratory to host the world’s largest magnetised iron calorimeter detector
The proposed site of the INO, near Bodi West Hills in Theni district | Express
The proposed site of the INO, near Bodi West Hills in Theni district | Express

CHENNAI: The future of the India-based Neutrino Observatory (INO), which proposes to construct an underground laboratory to host the world’s largest magnetised iron calorimeter detector, is hanging in balance with the State government on Thursday deciding to constitute an expert committee to carry out an independent environmental impact assessment.
The State government informed this to the Southern Bench of the National Green Tribunal (NGT), where the Tamil Nadu Pollution Control Board (TNPCB) also submitted that it could not process Consent to Establish (CoE) application till the expert committee submitted its report. The bench has given the State government four weeks’ time to carry out the exercise and posted the case to October 28.
Sources told Express that the State government has identified eight points near the project site close to the Bodi West Hills (BWH) region near Pottipuram in Theni district, 110 km from Madurai, where different field experiments would be conducted to weigh the pros and cons of the project.
This decision of the State government has not gone down well with the National Neutrino Collaboration Group (NNCG), which monitors the progress of the project. In a sharp reaction, INO’s chief spokesperson Naba K Mondal, also a senior scientist at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai, told Express, “Things can no longer go this way. The project is going nowhere and it’s time to take some tough decision.”
According to sources the INO collaboration had convened a meeting on October 24 and 25 at Homi Bhabha Centre for Science Education in TIFR, where the issue of the project being a ‘non-starter’ will be discussed.
The Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change (MoEF&CC) granted environment clearance for the project in June, 2011 based on Environment Impact Assessment (EIA) conducted by Salim Ali Centre for Ornithology and Natural History, Coimbatore. However, anti-INO activists claim that the body is not an accredited agency by the ministry to conduct such an exercise.
The project came to a halt after the Madurai bench of the Madras High Court passed an interim order on March 26, 2015, mandating clearance from the TNPCB before construction work at the site would begin. Until TNPCB gives CoE, the High Court stay will remain.
Scientists associated with the project said that the any further delays could defeat the purpose of the project because similar projects elsewhere could undermine India’s effort. “The US and China are going for building huge underground neutrino labs. Time is running out and the competitive edge that INO had is slipping away,” a scientist said.
Key concerns raised by the environmentalists and political spectrum in Tamil Nadu are that the project site is located in the Idukki-Theni charnockyte aquifer (ITCA) with an area of about 4500 Km2, which feeds three river systems - Periyar, Vaigai and Vaippar.
Idukki district, the water capital for six districts of Kerala and TN, has 12 dams storing 5 billion m3 of water, all within a radius of 50 km from the proposed site.
The 110-year-old Mullaperiyar dam, from which the INO will be drawing 400 m3 of water daily, is at a distance of 50 km from the site.

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