Environmental Impact Assessment of Peruru Banda Hill Before and after the Construction of The Vakulamatha Temple at Tirupati, Andhra Pradesh, India

This paper deals with an environmental impact assessment of the Peruru Banda Hill comprising of granite, located at around 8 km west of Tiruchanur, Tirupati District, Andhra Pradesh, India before and after the construction of the Vakulamatha Temple by the Tirumala-Tirupati Devasthanams (TTD) in June 2022. Studies using multi-date Google Earth Pro (GEP) satellite images generated from the software available in the public domain revealed a remarkable improvement in the environmental condition of the temple portion of the Hill, while the remaining portion of the hill is either highly water-logged or marked with rugged hilly region at varying elevations owing to illegal mining by local artisans. This paper provides a methodology helpful to the TTD Engineering Department to transform the entire rocky and water-logged areas of the hill into a high-value prime land through appropriate mining of Peruru granite and conjunctive use of surface water and groundwater in the nearby Peruru Tank.     

Tirumala-Tirupati Devasthanams (TTD), Peruru Banda Hill, Vakulamatha Temple, Environmental Impact Assessment, Illegal Mining of Granite, Transformation of water-logged and Rocky Portions into Prime Land through legal mining..

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