27 February,2011 08:21 AM IST | | Rinkita Gurav
Area activist receives response to his 2008 letter of opposition to the project three years later. It's too late to protest, he is told. BNHS rejects BMC claim that it gave advice to the latter
Ever since the Powai lake beautification project was announced in 2007, it has been at the centre of protests from environmentalists for the impact it will have on the trees and crocodiles in the area. The latest twist in the tale, even though the project is now complete, is that Animal Welfare Board member Sunish Subramaniam received a replyu00a0 from the BMC to two letters of protest he had written against the project, in 2008 and 2010, only last month.
Powai lake was inaugurated as Powai Nisarg Udyan in a glittering
ceremony by Mayor Shraddha Jadhav and Uddhav Thackeray last month.
The reply claims he was "too late to oppose the project now that it had been completed." Subramaniam had written the first letter on February 4, 2008, mentioning his concern for the ecology of the area being affected due to the construction of fountains and the use of debris and soil to reclaim land on the fringes of the lake.
Subramaniam says, "We had opposed the makeover, mainly, the four fountains in Powai Lake, right from the time the renovation proposals were made by the civic body. But nothing was done."u00a0
He didn't receive a reply to his first letter, so he wrote another in September 2010, for which the reply arrived in January 2011 from the hydraulic department. "The reply clearly states that nothing can be done now since the renovation is complete.
They want to wash their hands off the matter even though I have been raising the issue since 2008, when it was in the planning stages."u00a0 Meanwhile, the response from the deputy hydraulic engineer (of which copies are with SUNDAY MiD DAY) also claims that expert advice was taken from the Bombay Natural History Society (BNHS) and the Chennai Crocodile Park before work began.
When this reporter checked with the Director of BNHS, Dr Asad Rahmani, he said he was not aware of any consultation. "We have not received any calls or letters from the BMC for any advice. Building concrete walls and jogging tracks on all the sides of the lake will affect the ecology. The best kind of beautification is natural beautification, with which we should not interfere."
When contacted, deputy hydraulic engineer P M Guhe, said, "We had written to the BNHS. The BNHS asked us to take advice from the forest department." He said the BMC will be approaching people working at Chandrapur and Bhandara parks for advice, and that until now, no firm decision on the construction of a Crocodile Park or a bird sanctuary has been taken. "The musical fountains and beautification were cleared by the Environment Ministry," he claims.
