Tamil Nadu govt can save river beds by mandating artificial sand

Chennai: The Madras high court disposed of a Public Interest Litigation, which sought a direction to the authorities to ban river sand mining and mandate compulsory use of M-sand (manufactured sand) as an alternative material for construction activities and to cancel the licences granted to various sand quarries.

A division bench comprising Acting Chief Justice Huluvadi G.Ramesh and Justice R.Mahadevan, which disposed of the PIL filed by agriculturist and former MLA M.Appavu, said it is for the authorities to do the needful on the representation made by the petitioner.

According to Appavu, on a PIL, this court in 2002 directed the state government to constitute a high level committee for conducting a scientific survey with reference to sandquarrying in rivers and river beds and submit a report with particular reference to damage caused on account of indiscriminate and illegal sand quarrying and to spell out remedial measures to ameliorate the malady.
Accordingly, the committee, after an extensive study, submitted its report recommending various measures for regulation of sand mining in the state. 

One of the measures suggested by the committee was to bring suitable amendments to the Tamil Nadu Minor Mineral Concession Rules. Consequently, the government introduced Rule 38-A, whereby all existing leases for quarrying sand have been made ineffective and the right to exploit sand in the state vest with the state government, he added.

He said another major recommendation of the committee was to encourage research programmes to find alternate materials for sand and in pursuance of the same, PWD has issued circular, permitting the use of crushed stone sand as an alternate material to natural sand and also standardise the usage of the said crushed stone sand in construction activities.

In spite of the recommendation of the use of crushed stone sand, the usage of river sand continues in all construction activities, not only in private sector but also in government sector at various levels. Since the river sand was continuously mined, the state has to face a drastic situation of rapid drying up of rivers, lakes, ponds, severe water scarcity leading to drought.

Moreover, agricultural well have already dried up and without enough water, undertaking agriculture itself was under question and due to these uncertainties many farmers have committed suicide or are on the verge of quitting agriculture, he added.