Environmental Assessment Studies of Lime Kilns at Maihar (M. P.)

Abstract

Environmental Assessment {EA) describes the whole process by which information about the environmental effects of a project is collected and assessed. In a developing country like India an "environmentally compatible development" has to be evolved for which Environmental Impact Assessment is the only answer. EIA of a development project provides the necessary management guidelines and in deciding the corrective measures to be adopted in managing the environmental system. Lime is a natural material, which is collected from nature as limestone since time immemorial all over the world. But the usual process of extraction in the lime kilns has also caused concerned on account of its potentiality of polluting the environment particularly air, water and soil. In present investigation an attempt has been made to assess the environmental impacts of lime kilns at Maihar (MP) Battelle Environmental Evaluation System (BEES} has been applied in the present assessment study. The addition of environmental impact unit values of all the four sections (Categories) i.e. Ecology, Environmental Pollution, Aesthetics and Human interest provide with a over all negative values as - 476.6 and 36 positive values. In case of no industry situation the EIU values might have a total of 150. This indicates that due to lime kilns and on going mining and expansion work and also other related activities approximately 56.07 % of the over all environmental quality is negatively affected or likely to be affected while only 3.6% of the benefits could be sought in improving living standard.

Keywords

• Environmental Assessment (EA)
• Environmental Quality (EQ)
• Environmentally Compatible Development (ECD)
• Battelle Environmental Evaluation System (BEES)