India: JSW’s greenfield plant in Odisha cleared by Environment Ministry

– By Meera Mohanty/SteelMint Bureau

JSW Utkal has received a final clearance from the Ministry of Environment and Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC) for its proposed 13.2 mn t pa crude steel plant, 10 mn t pa cement grinding unit and a 900MW captive power plant in the coastal district of Jagatsinghpur, Odisha.

The 1125.284 ha area, barring 0.915 ha, is government owned. Of this, 1069.581 ha is diverted forest land for which the company has an earlier granted approval inherited in October of 2019. The land was where South Korean steelmaker Posco was to build a plant once. Sajjan Jindal’s JSW Steel which decided to build a greenfield plant in the state after acquiring iron ore mines in Odisha has had a much smoother journey.

The integrated steel plant, to cost INR 65,000 crore according to the company, is linked to a 52 mn t pa and INR 2100 crore captive jetty which should get a clearance soon. Another expert committee of the MoEFCC has recommended an EC for this jetty. The steelmaker has two berths at the nearby Paradip Port. Iron ore will come from its mines in Odisha, fetched through a 30 mn t pa slurry pipeline, and water, 223200 KLD, from the Jobra barrage on the Mahanadi river, 87 km from the site.

This comes four days after the High Court of Orissa disposed of petitions from villagers who had clashed with cops in January this year. The HC had sought affidavits from aggrieved villagers which the collector is to now send to the MoEFCC. The court had also asked for a list of pending cases against those that had opposed land acquisition. ‘With those apprehensive of not being heard, “having been afforded an adequate opportunity either in the form of oral hearing at the site itself or by way of affidavits”, the court last Thursday decided it would not comment and let the “law will take its course” in cases pending in various courts.

The specific conditions imposed by the Ministry includes a greenbelt of 372 ha or almost a third of the total area. JSW Utkal has also been asked to leave untouched two patches of land, totalling 84.72 ha, between the plant and jetty and also sand dunes measuring 11.53 ha in the north-easter portion of the site which it has been tasked with “preserving and maintaining”. It must also set up a conservation cell that would include an ecologist and marine biologist and enlist experts from National Institute of Oceanography (NIO).

The land needs to be raised by 6.5 meters to protect it from floods from cyclones that this region is prone to. This JSW Utkal proposes to do with the 30 million cubic metres it will dredge to make its jetties navigable. It has also committed to spending INR 196.05 crores towards its Corporate Environment Responsibility (as per an MoEFCC office memo dated 30 September 2020) to build, among other things, a 200 bed hospital.