Debris debate prolongs as RTI flags Lotus Lake a wetland, CIDCO still says no

Once allotted to Indian Airlines, Lotus Lake’s wetland status is now at the center of a state-CIDCO row, with RTI documents confirming it’s a protected waterbody despite debris and denial.

Navi Mumbai: As a precursor to the notification of wetlands, the ground-truthing exercise of the controversial Lotus Lake wetland in Nerul, Navi Mumbai, has been completed by the National Centre for Sustainable Coastal Management (NCSCM), the state government confirmed in response to a Right to Information (RTI) query.

This is significant in light of the City and Industrial Development Corporation of Maharashtra Ltd (CIDCO) claiming that Lotus Lake is not a wetland, said NatConnect Director B N Kumar, who filed the RTI application. Moreover, the State Environment Department, in its response uploaded on the RTI website on August 26, clearly referred to Lotus Lake as a “wetland,” he pointed out.

The process of “brief documentation” of the wetland, along with other water bodies in the state, has been ongoing, and the NCSCM report is awaited, the state environment department said in response to NatConnect Foundation’s query. The report will be sent to the District Wetland Committee, according to the response signed by Nilesh Potedar, public information officer and Scientist-2 at the environment department.

Kumar sought to know the status of notifying the wetland, as the NCSCM, which is mandated to map and document wetlands in the state, has surveyed Lotus Lake, Panje, NRI, TS Chanakya, and Kharghar wetlands.

Green groups were up in arms after CIDCO partly landfilled the wetland with debris. Kumar complained to the Union Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change (MOEFCC), the Chief Minister, and the State Environment Department about the landfill.

The MOEFCC has taken up the issue with the environment department, which sought status reports on the lake from the Thane district collector and CIDCO. The corporation claimed that Lotus Lake is a man-made waterbody and had once even allotted it to Indian Airlines.

CIDCO has so far defied Forest Minister Ganesh Naik’s directive to remove the debris from the wetland. Naik had set a week’s deadline on June 26 for the corporation to act. Quoting an earlier response from the MOEFCC, Kumar said CIDCO is not the authority to decide on the status of wetlands.

As per the Ramsar Convention definition, wetlands are “areas of marsh, fen, peatland, or water, whether natural or artificial, permanent or temporary, with water that is static or flowing, fresh, brackish, or salt, including areas of marine water the depth of which at low tide does not exceed six metres.”