For Mumbai region to get water implement Kasturi panel, says MoEF committee

If Mumbai and its neighbourhood want to improve its drinking water supply, Maharashtra government will have to implement recommendations of K Kasturirangan Committee declaring 37% of Western Ghats as ecologically sensitive area. Chetan Chauhan reports.

Updated on: Apr 23, 2013, 19:36:51 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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If Mumbai and its neighbourhood want to improve its drinking water supply, Maharashtra government will have to implement recommendations of K Kasturirangan Committee declaring 37% of Western Ghats as ecologically sensitive area.

This is one of the conditions imposed by an environment ministry committee to overturn its year-old decision scrapping a drinking water project for Mumbai Metropolitan Authority.

The ministry's Forest Advisory Committee, mandated to examine all projects for diversion of forestland, in April 2012 had rejected a proposal to construct a dam on Kalu river in Thane district.

The rejection was on the grounds of violation of Forest Conservation Act by starting construction without clearance, commitment of the state government not to initiate new water supply project after getting approval for Shai River Project and submergence of 18 villages. The FAC had also said that the project was within seven kilometers of a wildlife sanctuary and was part of ecologically sensitive area.

As the project had political importance, Maharashtra chief minister Prithviraj Chavan met environment minister Jayanthi Natarajan and sought FAC review of the project. On request of the environment minister, the FAC decided to re-consider the project.

After examining submissions of the state government earlier this month and over-looking the grounds for rejection, the FAC approved the project. Even though nothing had dramatically changed since the rejection, the newly constituted FAC expressed satisfaction over the state government's clarifications and overlooked its adverse impact on tribals in 18 villages.

The Maharashtra government told the FAC that the total water requirement of Mumbai and Mumbai Metropolitan Region in 2031 would be 10,657 million litres per day (MLD) against the present water supply of 4,672 MLD.

"Therefore, it is necessary to construction Kalu Dam," the minutes of the FAC meeting says, with reference to the no new water project commitment.

While FAC termed this commitment as "ill-informed" it agreed with the state government for taking up Kalu River Project, which would result in destruction of 1.48 lakh trees --- that can cover one-fourth of Mumbai city -- in about 1,000 hectares of forestland.

The committee imposed four approval conditions including implementation of Kasturirangan panel recommendations even before the committee had submitted its report to the ministry. "It shows that the FAC knew what Kasturirangan panel was recommending," a senior ecologist, who was not willing to be quoted, said.

Other conditions for approving the project included penal compensatory afforestation on degraded land equal to submerged forestland in addition to compensatory afforestation. The state government has also been asked to conduct a cumulative impact assessment of all drinking water projects in the Western Ghat region on flora and fauna and to implement its findings.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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