A four-member expert team deputed by theMinistry of Environment and Forests (MoEF) Tuesday visited the site of SouthKorean steel major Posco's proposed steel plant in Odisha, an official said.
The team, led by former civil aviation secretary K. Roy Paul, will assess theimpact of the project on environment afresh as the National Green Tribunal(NGT) in March suspended the environment clearance granted to the project bythe ministry citing violation and asked for a fresh review.
"The team visited the project affected villages in Jagatsinghpurdistrict," additional district magistrate Surijit Das told IANS.
The team is scheduled to attend a meeting of senior state officials atBhubaneswar Wednesday, he said.
The other members of the committee who have accompanied Paul include S.R. Wate,director of National Environmental Engineering Research Institute (NEERI), R.Ramesh, Director of the National Centre for Sustainable Coastal Management(NCSCM), and R.D. Singh, Director of the National Institute of Hydrology (NIH).
The Odisha government had inked a pact with Posco in 2005 for the 12 milliontonnes per annum steel project near the port town of Paradip in the district ofJagatsinghpur, about 120 km from here.
The $12 billion steel project, touted as the largest foreign investment inIndia, has, however, yet to make any significance progress due to localprotests and regulatory hurdles.
It faced a major setback when the green tribunal suspended the environmentclearance granted in January last year saying that the permission was accordedon the basis of a study done for a four million tonne per annum steel plantinstead of 12 million tonnes.