Environmental Impact Assessment of Faisalabad-Khanewal Motorway (M-4)

Abstract

Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) is the process of analyzing the impacts of a project on the environment. Roads generally play a major role in shaping social and economic structure of a locality thus they have huge impacts on the environment, therefore it important to carry out their environmental assessment. Thus the objective of this thesis is to identify the current environmental conditions and components of the project area and envisioning the impacts this project will have on them during and after construction phase. It also includes proposing appropriate mitigation measures to minimize the negative impacts of the project. The project taken up was M-4 Motorway from Faisalabad to Khanewal. Under Section 12 of Pakistan Environment Protection Act 1997 any such project requires an Initial Environmental Examination (IEE) or EIA. According to “Pakistan Environment Protection Agency (Review of IEE/EIA) Regulations 2000”, this project required an EIA. The motorway will be four lane dual carriage way. An area for addition of a lane in future will be reserved on the sides of each carriageway. The Right of Way (RoW) of the project is 100 meters and each lane will be 3.65meters wide. The total length of the road under study is 184km. The project is considered to be of great national and international importance. It is part of National Trade Corridor (NTC) and is proposed to provide easy access to traders and farmers for transportation of goods. The baseline conditions were studied mainly for physical and ecological environment. The alignment of the road passes through four districts i.e. Faisalabad, Toba Tek Singh, Jhang and Khanewal. The terrain of the project area is leveled and consists of agricultural fields. The climate of the area can be divided into two categories over the year, hot summers and mild winters. The major Kharif crops of the area are sugarcane, maize, rice and cotton whereas major Rabi crop is wheat. The probable impacts due to the proposed project were studied under the parameters of land acquisition, change of land use, relocation of utilities, soil erosion, pollution and impacts on flora and fauna and for each impact respective mitigation measures are proposed. The impacts and mitigation are assessed and proposed for different phases of the project like design phase, construction phase and operation phase.