e_Paper, Monday, May 15, 2017

2
MONDAY, MAY 15, 2017
DT
News
Good or bad, all flows down to
Intrusion of sand from unplanned mining in Meghalaya is leaving arable land barren and filling up Haor
• Abu Siddique, back from
Meghalaya, India
Sand and stone chips dumped
from unplanned mining operations
in the Indian state of Meghalaya
are being flushed downstream to
Bangladesh, affecting arable land
and decreasing the depths of the
Haor basins. This in turn is making
the northeastern region vulnerable
to flash-floods.
According to the Department
of Agricultural Extension’s Sunamganj
district office, around 120
hectares of arable land has been
covered by sand in Tahirpur upazila
over the last decade, turning it
completely barren.
“And this is only in that specific
area. If we look across the region,
located south of the Megahlaya hills
near the Bangladesh-India border,
the damage is massive,” said Zahidul
Haque, DAE deputy director.
Andrew Sholomar from Rajai village
in the upazila is one of the biggest
victims of this sand intrusion.
“I have already lost around 15
acres of my 20 acres of land,” he
told the Dhaka Tribune.
If this cannot be stopped, his
family might end up starving as it
is dependent on that land, he said.
The flow of sand and stone chips
coming down with monsoon water
has been decreasing the depths of
the Haor basins, increasing the risk
of flash-floods.
Hydrologist Prof Ainun Nishat
said although the flash-floods are
a common phenomenon in the
northeastern wetlands, there has
been an increase in its frequency
and magnitude.
“Water usually carries sediment
downstream. This is also true of
the northeastern region,” he said.
But the volume of sand intrusion
with the water is alarming and need
to be stopped at any cost, he added.
Calling attention to several Beels
– small water bodies – in Kharchar
Haor in Sunamganj, the expert said
many of them have already been
filled up with sand.
“The frequency and coverage of
flash-floods have been increasing
in the region as the beds of water
bodies are gradually rising up,” said
45-year-old Kamruzzaman Kamrul,
chairman of Tahirpur Upazilla
Parishad, who has lived in the area
since his birth.
What’s going on upstream
Mineral resources including coal,
limestone and stones are the biggest
part of Meghalaya’s economy.
The mining mostly takes place in
three regions of the state – East Khasi
Hills, West Khasi Hills and Garo Hills
– all of which border Bangladesh.
Sources in Meghalaya say the
state government has relatively little
control over the mining industry
in these autonomous regions.
According to the sources, there are
around 1,000 operational mines in
those three areas, all privately run.
Altrisha Lyndoh, owner of a coal
mine in West Khasi hills, told the
Dhaka Tribune: “We have been doing
this mining business in our own
land. We dig the land, extract coal
and sell it.”
Asked whether she knows about
the impacts of coal mining downstream,
she said: “I have no idea.”
HJ Syiemlieh, a professor of geography
at the North Eastern Hill
University in Shillong, told the Dhaka
Tribune: “To extract coal, primarily
the miners cut down forests and
open pits, which ultimately makes
the topsoil unstable and lets it wash
downhill with monsoon water.”
In 2015, the Indian National
Green Tribunal, a government
body, issued a ruling to stop unplanned
coal mining in Meghalaya,
saying it was destroying the topsoil
and the local ecology.
But the professor said as there is
no strong government control over
the issue, many mines have continued
to run their operations in an
unplanned manner.
A fateful day
Sand intrusion from Meghalaya has
gone up sharply since 2008 when a
sudden landslide in the West Khasi
Hills of Meghalaya near the Bangladesh-India
border sent a massive
volume of sand down to Bangladesh.
The incident destroyed around
50 acres of land within minutes.
“Within a few minutes, the nearby
ponds and wetlands filled up
How mining in India affects Bangladesh downstream
Talking about how mining in India affects downstream Bangladesh with toxic water, HJ Syiemlieh,
head of the Department of Geography at North Eastern Hill University, Meghalaya, speaks to the
Dhaka Tribune’s Abu Siddique on the varied environmental impacts of this industry
Tell us about the history of mining
in Meghalaya.
It began with limestone mining
long before the British Raj came to
this subcontinent. You can still see
houses made of bricks and lime in
Bangladesh and Calcutta that dates
back to that period.
When was coal introduced to the
mining industry?
The British began to the exact coal
in this region when they arrived
from Cherrapunjee side till about
1969. Then moved their mining
across the hills to Assam.
Is there an environmental impact
of mining?
There is an environmental impact
nationally. Mining waste especially
coal mining waste is highly toxic.
During the monsoon this toxic
waste gets washed up and ends up
in the river.
In addition, the mining needs
large parts of the land to be deforested
which is definitely a loss of
biodiversity as well as a loss of top
soil as it gets washed away with the
monsoon rain.
Is the mining in Meghalaya
including coal, limestone and
other mineral resources currently
controlled by the government or
by the people themselves?
The big issue is, the land belongs to
the community. The government
has no land. That’s why the individuals
are mining their land rich
with mineral resources.
That means all the mining is
controlled by locals and the
government has no control over it?
Something like that. The government
does have control to some
extent but it’s limited. Now with the
National Green Tribunal (NGT), they
have regulated the entire industry.
And most probably this means mining
will reduce in the area.
Three districts—East Khashi Hills,
West Khasi Hills and Garo Hills
have autonomous bodies. Can the
NGT issued rule govern over them
to stop mining?
In some sense they are autonomous
district offices but the NGT
has been governing over their activites
in recent years.
If the mining is mostly controlled
by the locals, then how does the
government plan to mine uranium
here?
There is huge opposition about the
government’s plans to mine uranium
here. If the government really
wants to extract uranium then
they would have to buy the land
from the people first. But as far as
I know, this programme is still at a
ABU SIDDIQUE
conceptual stage. Back in the 90s
the government had identified certain
uranium rich areas and wanted
to mine them.
The mining in Meghalaya causes
dregs mostly sand, coal and stone
chips to wash downstream into
Bangladesh that ends up covering
large areas of agricultural lands. Do
you think there is a way to stop this
process?
I believe human activity does have
an adverse effect on nature which
needs to be contained as much as
possible. There needs to be a way
to stop this down stream sedimentation
of mining dregs that the government
of both India and Bangladesh
need to find a mutual solution
to.
There was some recent reports by
the Megahlayan media that a large
number of fishes have been dying
caused by the mining in the region.
Similar kinds of things were
reported in a Bangladeshi media
recently as well, claiming a large
number of fishes died in the Haor
region because of radiation from
uranium mining in India. What do
you make of this claim?
In the case of the fish dying in
Meghalaya, I am not convinced it
was caused by mining. In regards
to uranium radiation, how is this
going to kill fish if there is no uranium
mines here in the first place?
If uranium mining starts in
Meghalaya in the future, do
you not think this will impact
Bangladesh downstream?
Uranium mining will be a problem
not only for Bangladesh but also
for Megahalaya itself. It all depends
on how the extraction is manage,
mined and preserved. We have
been asking the government exactly
this as most people are extremely
concerned about this.
The government should use cutting
edge technology that will not
negatively impact the water, fishes,
trees and land -as all of them are interrelated.
•