State picks holes in NGT panel report recommending increasein safety distance from quarries

 

G. KRISHNAKUMAR, 

KOCHI, september 23, 2025

The State government has picked holes in the report by an expert panel that recommended a safety distance of 150 m between stone quarries and residential or inhabited areas.

A report submitted by the government before the Principal Bench of the National Green Tribunal (
NGT) on September 18, 2025 claimed that the panel report has flaws in many aspects and there is no need to enhance the present regulatory distance of 50 m.

Based on scientific studies carried out in quarries located in nine districts, the committee, which was appointed by the NGT, found that the existing safety distance of 50 m was highly inadequate.

The government report claimed that the results of the live experiments conducted by the committee have many anomalies and lacked proper methodology and design. There were 497 granite quarries functioning in Kerala during 2022-2023.

The sample set composed of only nine quarries (1.8%) to interpret the whole scenario. Standard sampling with an acceptable margin of error of plus or minus 20% required a minimum of 23 samples to represent the data set of 497 quarries. Besides, the reason for site selection was not furnished. Districts with the highest number of working quarries were avoided, it said.

The government claimed that the records attached to the report pertaining to the nature and timing of blasting conducted in quarries showed that blasting is carried out daily in two prefixed timings, with maximum 60 holes. It is rarely that a quarry in Kerala functioned with blasting of 60 holes at a time.

‘Area will come down’

The panel had erroneously created a circumstance to project maximum ground vibration in each case, which is “unfair and unjust.”

The government stated that the area suitable for mining in Kerala would come down substantially if the distance criteria is increased. It will result in imminent shortage of construction material, it claimed.

The joint committee comprised experts from the Indian Institute of Technology (Indian School of Mines), Dhanbad; Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee; CSIR-Central Building Research Institute, Roorkee; the Wadia Institute of Himalayan Geology, Dehradun; Directorate General of Mines Safety, Bengaluru; Central Institute of Mining and Fuel Research, Dhanbad; and the Central Pollution Control Board.

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Dilution of norms for quarries irks Greens

T. Nandakumar, Thiruvananthapuram
The Hindu, March 25, 2019

In a decision that has raised the hackles of regulatory experts and environmental activists, the State Environment Impact Assessment Authority (SEIAA) has cut the minimum distance for quarries from forestland by half, to 50 metres.
The 87th meeting of SEIAA in January took the decision to dilute the distance regulation after a detailed discussion on the report of a sub committee which studied the environmental impact caused by quarrying adjacent to forest areas. The meeting observed that a large number of quarries were operating in the forest boundary without environmental clearance from the SEIAA or district level EIA authorities.
The authority chaired by H. Nagesh Prabhu verified available documents and found that neither the Union Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change nor any State EIA authority had fixed a minimum distance for quarries from forest boundary.
Taking the facts into consideration, the meeting decided to impose a minimum distance of 50 m between quarries and forest land. However, it authorised the State Expert Appraisal Committee to recommend higher distance from the forest based on scientific reasons.
Sensitive areas
The decision, however, has been opposed by regulatory experts who caution against diluting the regulations for quarrying in a State like Kerala with large tracts of ecologically sensitive areas.
Former chairman of SEIAA K.P. Joy said the authority had prescribed a distance of 100 m from the forest for mining activity as a safeguard for the protection of the environment.
“The decision on the buffer distance was taken after considering the importance and fragility of the ecosystems of the Western Ghats.
Sub terrain disturbances and tremors caused by mining and the noise and dust from quarries would be catastrophic to not only to big animals like tigers and elephants and huge tropical trees but also small life forms like rodents, birds and snakes,” he said.
“Allowing quarries to operate close to the forest boundary may lead to a spike in the instances of man- animal conflict,” says T.V. Sajeev of the Kerala Forest Research Institute.
“The constant dust and sound from quarries could force animals to leave the forest in larger numbers,” he observes.
“Sound waves travel fast through granite and could destabilise the slopes, enhancing the risk of landslips during rains,” says Dr. Sajeev.
A study conducted by KFRI in 2017 found that there are 79 quarries within one km from protected forests and 1378 close to reserved forests in the State.

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