‘Shocked’ Lavasa says had replied to all issues

Expressing “shock” over the show-cause notice issued by the Environment Ministry on Friday,Lavasa Corporation said on Saturday that it had already responded to all environmental issues in a letter to the Maharashtra government last month. In that letter,to the State Environment Impact Assessment Authority (SEIAA) on October 29,Lavasa had maintained that the provisions of neither the EIA Notification of 1994 nor those of the EIA Notification of 2006 were applicable to its project.Lavasa,which is developing a hill station between Mumbai and Pune,had said it had made no construction 1,000 m above sea level. The EIA Notification of 1994,it wrote,applied to only tourism projects situated 1,000 m above mean sea level and requiring an investment of Rs 5 crore or more.The EIA Notification of 2006,which superseded all previous orders,it had added,also did not apply to its project since there were no expansion or modernisation plans involved.“It is clear that as far as our project is concerned,there was no change in process and/or in technology. The EIA notification dated 14th September 2006 would be attracted to existing projects only if there is an expansion or modernisation of existing projects or activities entailing capacity addition with change in process and/or technology,” Lavasa had contended in that letter,written in response to allegations by NGOs that Lavasa was violating environmental laws. On Friday,the Environment Ministry issued a show-cause notice to Lavasa asking why a part of its construction should not be removed since it was built 1,000 m above sea level. It gave the developer two weeks to respond,and asked it to stop all work at the site in the meantime.