Second Mumbai airport takes off

“The biggest compromise is the Navi Mumbai site itself,” Ramesh said. He said the Navi Mumbai location had become a fait accompli in view of the fact that there was no viable alternative site available in and around Mumbai and that a majority of the land at the present proposed site was already in the possession of project developer CIDCO (City and Industrial Development Corporation of Maharashtra) and the state government.

“Having accepted the site as a fait accompli,the Environment Ministry has acted in good faith to ensure that environmental impacts of the project are minimised. We are happy to note that 80-85 per cent of the concerns raised by us are being addressed by the changes that have been made in the project design and the steps that will be taken by CIDCO on our suggestions,” he said.

“The construction of the Navi Mumbai airport can technically start from today,” Ramesh said.

Today’s clearance brings to an end a year-and-a-half long tug-of-war between the Environment Ministry on one side and other stakeholders like CIDCO,Maharashtra government and the Civil Aviation Ministry on the other,that had put a question mark on this crucial infrastructure project that is being designed to address the problem of a rapidly increasing demand on Mumbai’s extremely congested airspace.

The environmental approval,however,is laced with as many as 32 conditions. Among them are a commitment to plant mangroves in 615 hectares around the airport in lieu of the destruction of existing 98 hectares of mangroves at the site,rehabilitation of about 3000 families,and an assurance that no further property development would be taken up inside the proposed aeronautial airport zone area in the future.

The Environment Ministry had been opposing the Navi Mumbai site on three main grounds — that it will lead to the destruction of mangroves present at the location,considered to be crucial for protecting Mumbai’s coastline from degrading,that the project would lead to diversion of two rivers and that a 90-metre hillock will have to be razed to the ground.

Of the three,the hillock has already all but gone,thanks to quarrying,and therefore it was no longer an issue. About 98 hectares of the mangroves will be permanently destroyed,and to compensate for that,CIDCO has agreed to develop three new mangrove parks,over a total 615 hectares of land. CIDCO also agreed to bring down the distance between the two proposed runways from 1800 metres to 1555 metres,thereby preventing the diversion of the Gadhi river.

The other river at the site,Ulwe,“a tidally influenced water body”,will still need to be “recoursed” and the Environment Ministry has put in a few conditions to ensure that its ecological impact is minimised.

However,a few steps still remain to be completed. The project has to still obtain a forest clearance from the Environment Ministry and permission from the Bombay High Court to cut down mangroves.