Mumbai: 2 more wetlands wiped out, climate activists warn of disaster

Villages such as Jasai, Dastan, Belpada, Karal, Jaskar, Sonari and Savarkhar in Uran are in danger of getting flooded

With the massive reclamation of Dastan Phata and Savarkhar wetlands, several villages in Uran in the Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR) are in danger of getting flooded, environmentalists said.

The reclamation by JNPA at Dastan Phata-Jasai, which began five years ago despite the green groups’ protests, has blocked the intertidal water flow, pushing the low-lying areas further down, Nandakumar Pawar, director of Sagarshakti, the marine division of NGO Vanashakti, said.

A 3.6-km stretch of the creek from Jasai Dastan Phata to Karale has not only been buried, but the height of the landfill has gone up at least three to four feet above the adjoining Uran-Panvel stretch of NH348, Pawar said.

NatConnect Foundation director B N Kumar said the debris dumping was stopped for a while in 2019 after the environmentalists complained to the High Court-appointed wetlands committee. “Moreover, the contractors did not have the required royalty permits for bringing the truckloads of earth dug from nearby hills which was amply proved during the site inspections carried out at our instance,” Kumar said.

Also Read | Collective action needed to save wetlands

The sad part of the reclamation is that neither the environment department nor the wetland committee questioned the claims by CIDCO and JNPA that the intertidal water body spreading across over 400 hectares is not a wetland, Pawar and Kumar said in their complaint to the Chief Minister.

The landfill was done for allotting plots to the JNPA project-affected people under the government’s 12.5% scheme, a signboard at the site said. “While the compensation is a must, JNPA and CIDCO should have picked up already developed lands instead of fresh landfill on the creek water,” Dilip Koli of Paaramparik Machhimar Kruti Samiti said.

Now, the villages such as Jasai, Dastan, Belpada, Karal, Jaskar, Sonari and Savarkhar may get flooded as the tidal flow has been completely blocked, he said.

The Uran-Panvel road that connects the JNPA container port and the JNPA SEZ coming up across it will also get inundated if the tides go high, Kumar said and pointed out that the Arabian Sea is just a stone’s throw from the reclamation.

A double whammy for the villages is that the Savarkhar wetland has also been totally dried up thanks to relentless reclamation, the green groups said. In this case too, the revenue officials stopped the reclamation in December 2021 for some time, but they too relented after JNPA argued that the 22-hectare waterbody is not a wetland.

“This is really fortunate because Savarkhar wetland figures in the list prepared by the Uran Tahsildar himself, and the officials have failed to protect them,” Pawar said. He pointed out that the local sarpanchs had earlier complained to the Tahsilldar about unseasonal flooding due to the Savrakhatr landfill, but the officials chose to neglect the issue.

On a complaint filed by NatConnect in March 2022, the Union Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Control (MOEFCC) has asked the state wetland authority to look into the issue and report which is still awaited.

Another key issue is that the checklist for environmental clearance filed by JNPA SEZ clearly stated that there would be no landfill, Kumar said and wondered why the district collector and the environment departments have ignored the alarm bells sounded by the activists.