Bhubaneswar, Aug. 21: Hopes of the 12million-tonne Posco steel project getting back on the track have been revived with a four-member expert team of the Union ministry of environment and forest (MoEF) visiting the site near Paradip today.

The visit of the team led by K. Ray Paul comes in the wake of reports that the ministry’s expert appraisal committee is in favour of revalidation of the project’s environment clearance, which was suspended by the National Green Tribunal on March 30.

The committee is reported to have recommended revalidation of the green clearance accorded to the South Korean steel behemoth till 2017.

Posco’s bid to set up a state-of-the-art steel plant near Paradip has encountered a series of hurdles since the company signed an MoU with the state government in June 2005.

With land acquisition proceeding at a snail’s pace, the project, which is India’s biggest foreign direct investment, has been in virtual limbo much to the concern of the Naveen Patnaik government that touted the proposed investment of Rs 52,000 crore by the company as its crowning achievement on the industrial front when the agreement was inked seven years ago.

The experts’ panel flanked by officials of the district administration, state-run Idco and state pollution control board visited the project area to assess the environment impact because of the setting up of the proposed mega steel project.

The expert team, which visited the project area consisting of Gadakujang, Nuagaon and Dhinkia gram panchayats, will assess the impact on local environment because of tree cutting and other such activities.

“The panel was constituted by the MoEF on the direction of the National Green Tribunal. We are here to assess the environment impact assessment. Our assessment would be strictly on the lines of guidelines framed by the tribunal. We neither held a public hearing nor did we interact with the villagers. However, we heard a cross-section of people who ventilated their grievances,” Paul said.

The panel members visited Noliasahi, Nuagaon, Gobindpur and Bose-callis’ point where clashes between supporters and opponents of the project in December last year had led to suspension of work. A large part of this belt now looks denuded following large-scale felling of trees to facilitate acquisition of land for the steel plant. However, contrary to expectations, the team did not visit the Jatadhari river mouth, the proposed site for Posco’s captive port.

Jagatsinghpur collector Satya Kumar Mallick said the team, accompanied by district officials, visited the project area for environment impact assessment.

A section of farmers drew the team’s attention to the disappearance of the area’s green cover, which has exposed it to the ingress of tidal water.

“Noliasahi witnesses frequent ingress of tidal water. The areas once had abundant reserve of forest but they were cleared for the land acquisition drive,” said Basudev Behera, a former panchayat samiti member of Gadakujang.

Minister of state for steel and mines Rajani Kant Singh said the government had decided to review the progress of all the major projects including Posco on August 25.