KARACHI: Undeterred by its recent blunders which forced the department to cancel its three consecutive hearings organised with scant public participation in the month of Ramazan this year, the Sindh Environmental Protection Agency (Sepa) once again violated its own rules and regulations and held a public hearing on Thursday at a local hotel.

The department held the hearing without ensuring proper prior publicity of the event and failed to provide sufficient time to stakeholders to go through project details, a mandatory requirement under the law.

The hearing chaired by Sepa director technical Ashique Ali Langha was called to discuss the environmental impact assessment (EIA) report of ‘Frere Excellency’, a residential-cum-commercial project to be built in a high-density zone on Abdullah Haroon Road near the Katrak Mansion in Saddar Town.

The ground plus-45 storey proposed building by Royal Enterprises covers an area of 4,044 square yards. Its EIA was conducted by Environmental Management Consultants (EMC).

As soon as the floor was opened for the question-answer session, Sepa officials leading the programme had to face a barrage of criticism for their failure in meeting Clause 3, Section 17, of the Sindh Environmental Protection Act, 2014.

The clause states that every review of an environmental impact assessment shall be carried out with public participation and, subject to the provisions of this act, after full disclosure of the particulars of the project.

“This 45-storey building project coming up in the red zone can seriously affect citizens and the environment in many different ways. Its public hearing should have been properly publicised through media to ensure maximum public participation today under the law,” said senior journalist Mehmood Alam Khalid, asking Sepa officials to disclose the newspapers’ names in which the advertisement about the public hearing was published.

The project, he said, entailed extraction of groundwater, installation of a reverse osmosis plant, a sewage treatment plant and a major intervention to address traffic congestion required review of its EIA report by independent experts.

“Unfortunately, what we are seeing here is eyewash. Over half of attendees in this hall are students, the rest came to know about the hearing either through personal calls or a post on a Facebook page,” he said.

He also raised objection to the absence of organisations like the World Wide Fund for Nature and the International Union for Conservation of Nature in the hearing to reply to public concerns, though, as the audience was informed during the presentation of the EIA report, they were consulted during the EIA process.

In his reply, deputy director Sepa Imran Sabir explained that a relevant advertisement was printed in three newspapers — The Age, Akhbar-i-Nau and Aasas.

‘Not in our hands’

“It’s not in our hands anymore. It’s the information department that decides when and where the advertisement would be published, though we have made the EIA report available on Sepa website,” he said.

Since the episode in which an advertisement got printed against a law enforcement agency some two years ago, all governments were now bound to get their advertisements printed through the information department, he added.

The environment department, he told the audience, couldn’t afford delay in holding the hearing as project proponents often took their cases to the environmental tribunal.

“We can’t force anyone to attend the hearing. I have seen officials of these NGOs that you are mentioning only a few times in the hundreds of public hearings I have conducted,” he said.

Sepa representatives, however, had no reply when someone from the audience questioned why the department had been unable to sort out the issue of lack of public participation in hearings, despite being highlighted many times.

“It’s legally important for you to ensure proper public participation in hearings as it lends credibility to the whole EIA process and your department,” said Shamsul Hasan, a senior environmental lawyer.

Notwithstanding these arguments, Sepa officials went ahead with the meeting and ignored calls to cancel the public hearing.

Technical issues

Earlier, a detailed presentation on the project’s EIA report was given by EMC consultant Saquib Ejaz Hussain according to which the project proponent had acquired required approvals from the Sindh High Density Board, the Sindh Building Control Authority, the PAF air headquarters and the Civil Aviation Authority.

“It’s a residential project with no major commercial activity,” he said, adding that the project proponent owned the land of the proposed building.

The proposed project, he said, had sufficient parking space and would make its own arrangements for parking, water supply, sewage treatment and energy needs.

“The project will extract 66,000 gallons per day and once operational that will be treated through a reverse osmosis plant. Most sewage will be recycled while the rest will be used to irrigate plantation,” he said.

He, however, admitted that the project would contribute to traffic congestion and suggestions in this regard had been made in the EIA report to sort out this issue.

High-rise ban

Replying to a question over the ban on high-rises, he said that the ban had come in the light of concerns related to water shortage and had nothing to do with the project under review since it would make its own water arrangement.

While the consultants claimed to have conducted detailed separate studies on the underground water extraction and the traffic issue, no report was shared with the participants.

The point that the city is experiencing massive extraction of groundwater but had no policy to monitor and regulate this trend was also raised and that Sepa had failed to implement its March order under which it had directed relevant civic bodies to submit EIA reports of 28 roads that had been commercialised, adding to city’s traffic woes.

In addition, there were also concerns related to the city’s highly polluted air, which, some participants believed would further degrade once the project became operational.

It might be recalled that Sepa had earlier cancelled three of its public hearings held in Ramazan this year after media reports suggested that they were held with minimal public participation.

Published in Dawn, September 8th, 2017