ON July 16, the Bombay High Court quashed the Coastal Regulation Zone clearances given for the construction of the southern section of the Mumbai Coastal Road Project, describing the award of clearances as having been carried out with a “lack of proper scientific study”. For the petitioners this was a victory though they realised that the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC), the agency carrying out the project, would approach the Supreme Court, which it did on July 22. A Supreme Court bench of Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi and Justice Deepak Gupta refused to stay the High Court’s decision and set the next date of hearing for August 20.
The High Court bench of Chief Justice Pradeep Nandrajog and Justice N.M. Jamdar clubbed together 17 public interest litigation petitions against the project and in their 219-page order said: “It is obvious that a serious lacuna in the decision-making process has occurred. The lacuna is that neither [the] MCZMA [Maharashtra Coastal Zone Management Authority] nor [the] EIA nor [the] MoEF [the Environment Ministry] took note of the fact that except for the environmental impact assessment [EIA] study conducted by the consultants, all other reports themselves informed the recipient of the reports that they were not based on complete and exhaustive analysis of the data and material required to opine on the adverse environmental impact.”
The total length of the coastal road is 29.2 kilometres, stretching from Princess Street in the southern part of the island to Kandivali in the northern suburbs. It is being jointly built at a cost of almost Rs.20,000 crore by the BMC and the Maharashtra State Road Development Corporation (MSRDC), and the stated purpose for the road is to ease the congestion on the arterial roads of the city.
The BMC is responsible for the southern stretch of 9.98 km from Princess Street to Worli, at a cost of Rs.12,721 crore. It is this sector that has come under fire from the High Court. Building the road involves reclamation to create about 90 hectares (ha) of land. The MCZMA first gave its green clearances on January 18, 2017. On May 11, 2017, the Union Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC) also gave its approval. Work began in December 2018.
From an environmental point of view, the coastal road spells destruction. The 90 ha of land will be created by dumping debris in the intertidal zone. This will effectively kill the ecosystem and hinder the livelihood options of the fishing community. The intertidal zone is one of the most ecologically diverse zones in ocean life. About 340 documented intertidal marine life species—including crustaceans, local and migratory birds, annelids, molluscs, fish, sea cucumber and even a type of coral—have been identified along the western coast of Mumbai, living in rock pools, mangroves, sea grass, tidal flats and sandy shores. Many of these are protected under Schedule I of the Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972.
Baffling clearances
This is what makes the MoEFCC’s clearance baffling, especially the stipulation that the project should be carried out within the framework of the Environment (Protection) Act, 1986, which means that the coastal ecology would have to be restored to its original state once the road was built. This will not be possible, and it is incredible that the MoEFCC thinks otherwise. Marine life is notoriously fragile—anemones, for instance, are now rarely seen along the Mumbai coast—and once destroyed there is no way to reintroduce or revive it. For example, it is not possible to uproot a mangrove tree and replant it elsewhere as was suggested in a dubious rehabilitation plan. Each mangrove bush has a spreading network of roots that sustains not only the individual tree but others around it as well.
In its clearance, the MoEFCC also said the tidal action would not be affected by the construction. Once again, this claim is dumbfounding. Debris dumping will alter the coastline, which in turn will affect tidal behaviour and the lives of the fishing community. In the Worli area alone, there are about 2,000 fishing families that are totally dependent on the sea for their livelihoods.
In June, the BMC said that it would not only compensate the fishermen but was also readying a detailed survey of the area (this after starting the project in December 2018). The corporation said in an affidavit: “The corporation will form a Fisherfolk Rehabilitation Assessment Committee to study the effect on the livelihood of fishermen that may occur due to the project, identify project-affected fishermen and formulate policy for monetary compensation.”
The fishermen have rejected this. “Social Ecology of the Shallow Seas: A Report on the Impact of Coastal Reclamation on Artisan Fishing in the Worli Fishing Zone” is a report brought out by the Collective For Spatial Alternatives and written by the architects Shweta Wagh, Hussain Indorewala and Mihir Desai. It says the reclamation is an “assault” on the economic, social and cultural rights of citizens, fishermen in particular. The report says that practically the entire rocky littoral zone (the shallow zone where enough sunlight penetrates the water to promote growth of aquatic plants) and parts of the sublittoral zone off the coast will be damaged irreversibly, which in turn will affect fishing.
If the coastal road does come about, it will certainly ease congestion but only temporarily. Past experience has shown that expanding infrastructure is not a long-term solution. It is merely a quick fix for the existing government to seemingly overcome problems and pat itself on its back and leave the core of the problem for the next government to deal with. Mumbai’s Bandra-Worli Sea Link is one such example. While traffic usually moves fast on the sea-spanning bridge itself, the exits at either end on to land become bottlenecks. It was meant to handle 1.25 lakh cars every day, but fewer than 50,000 cross over it now. It is a similar situation with the city’s flyovers. More than 50 were constructed in Mumbai with the promise that they would be the proverbial magic wand to fix the city’s traffic woes, but while long-distance traffic benefited, local traffic below the flyovers was thrown into worse chaos.
Successive governments and administrations avoid the real solutions such as implementing vehicular restrictions and improving existing public transport services. The suburban trains, which service close to 45 per cent of Mumbai’s residents, serve commuters of the north-south part of the city while the city’s iconic red buses, run by the Brihanmumbai Electric Supply and Transport Undertaking (BEST), cover those of the rest of the city. Mumbai ran efficiently on the local train services and the BEST. But for reasons best known to itself the government has let the BEST become an ailing organisation and not encouraged expansion plans for the suburban train network.
Aamchi Mumbai Aamchi BEST (Our Mumbai Our BEST), a citizen’s collective, said that the BEST could be revived at a cost of Rs.2,700 crore, a fraction of what was being spent on the coastal road, and the revival would benefit a greater chunk of the population. Instead, in a pre-election gambit, the government has further subsidised BEST fares and even urged BEST workers to stand at bus stops shouting out the revised fares as if they were selling wares at a market.
Improving the services of the local trains and the BEST is definitely required and is a matter of building on and expanding existing infrastructure rather than creating anything entirely new. The coastal road will cater only to the relatively small segment of the population that uses cars, especially since a Rs.250 toll is expected to be levied on some sections that will be managed by the MSRDC, though not on the BMC section. This again raises the question, who will the coastal road benefit? It is projected to carry 1.36 lakh cars daily. If one makes a rough estimate that each car carries three people, that works out to about four lakh passengers. That is nowhere near the 36 lakh passengers that the suburban trains carry every day. Plus, the local trains service a much wider area of the city than the coastal road will. Six lanes of the eight-lane road will be reserved for private cars and two for public transport, highlighting yet again discriminatory planning. Additionally, the coastal road will most likely not allow two-wheelers and three-wheelers. By the BMC’s own state of the environment report of last year, of the 33.5 lakh vehicles in the city, over 20 lakh (that is, more than 60 per cent) are two- and three-wheelers.
Water transportation
In the sound and fury over the coastal road, one workable project is being ignored. For an island city like Mumbai, it is a point of wonder that a water transportation project has not been vigorously pursued. It would be not only cheaper but also gentler on the environment. When the late B.F. Chhapgar, the legendary marine biologist, was asked why policies did not consider the environment, he would reply, with his trademark wryness: “Fish don’t vote.” Cynicism aside, it is an unalterable fact that huge infrastructure projects are not just detrimental to the environment but are often of limited benefit to people as well.
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