Dear Facebook friends, colleagues and media personnel Please print this article in your media. CAN CRZ BE USEFUL FOR MUMBAI ? This is utterly absurd !. CRZ is a criminal waste. It has no logic. It is only good for squeezing out money. How could it be useful? How many important projects are being held up, waiting for environmental clearance. Environmentalists struggle to drum home the message that we must protect the environment, the coastlines, the mangroves and ultimately the people living near the sea. In Mumbai large areas are exposed to the sea. The sea is a great asset but also a potential enemy with devastating capacities. Is CRZ meant and designed to protect the people in case of severe storms or tsunamis? Unfortunately the answer has to be NO. If CRZ was imposed for the protection of people, all Hill or even adequately elevated areas should have been excluded from the 500 meter CRZ limits. Nature has protected such areas from the sea. One must also understand that merely putting a limit of 500 meters does not provide any protection for the people living there. In a number of places areas beyond the 500 meter are still as vulnerable as the lands within the CRZ limits. Take for example the Racecourse: Major parts are at Zero elevation and the rest is hardly above sea level. Living outside the 500 meter does not mean that you are protected and safe. All lands which are only 3 meters above sea level could face severe flooding and damage. We also know that our railway tracks, in a number of places, get badly flooded every year – without any severe storm or tsunami. Such low laying tracks should be raised before we think of adding the elevated corridor on top. We should also ensure that the elevated track’s electric supply is independent of the flooding and power failures at the lower level. Very extensive parts of the city could face devastating destruction from the mighty forces of the sea. Could CRZ be of any help when we can see the warning signals of a steadily rising sea, warnings of environmentalist, extensive international studies which support the serious concerns and do not yet show any escape route except reducing pollution – which is not happening – and looking for alternative, green energy solutions. Several years ago, Mr. Mayank Gandhy, some builders, retired bureaucrats, NGOs and others had put in a huge effort into mobilizing the residents in mainly old buildings in south Mumbai to accept the idea of a large cluster re-development scheme for reviving their localities and creating a model for urban renewal. About half of the proposed cluster redevelopment area fell within CRZ limits. Both parts, the one half in the CRZ limits and the other half did not face the sea directly. They were not extremely low lying, but vulnerable. The idea was not to remove the rubble from demolished old buildings but to spread it and raise the elevation of the entire area and make it not only beautiful but also safer to live in. – Unfortunately, the obstacles were too many and too time consuming and the project never started and was given up. Presently Government is planning a much larger project : the rehabilitation and redevelopment of Dharavi. Dharavi is clearly a low-lying area and raising the elevation of the entire area should be made a part of the DRP. The responsibility of raising the land area – as a part of the development cost- must be placed on the shoulders of the developers/implementers. In more general terms CRZ should make our planners more conscious of the importance of elevation above the sea level – not merely the distance from the sea. Google maps with ‘Elevation above Sea Level’, give instant readings of elevation. This is a very objective and scientific method, not open to interpretation and misuse by local authorities. Expert planners and environmentalists should arrive at a desirable and necessary minimum elevation above the average sea level in future developments and re-developments. This minimum elevation could be 4 to 5m above average sea level. Filling costs be the responsibility of the Developer or Society. Existing buildings on insufficiently elevated lands could be given an option ( with no permissions required, only an application with building plans to be submitted to BMC) to add one extra floor provided they agreed to use the existing ground floor spaces for parking, storage etc. and provided that they raised their entire land area to the minimum elevation level. It is anticipated that CRZ will not continue and instead new guidelines, maybe under the name of MUMBAI ELEVATION STANDARDS (MES) will replace it. MES will make the whole of Mumbai open to development. Any land, within 500 meters or even beyond, can be taken up for development, following the provisions of MES. No doubt, in course of time and step by step, roads, water mains, sewage lines will also have to be raised in order to make them accessible for maintenance. The costs could be shared between the State, BMC and the respective Developers. Mumbai, our chaotic city, could gradually rejuvenate and become much safer for us today and our future generations. CRZ can provide the stimulus for re-thinking, planning and initiating protective and preventive measures. Adolf Tragler, Secretary, Slum Rehabilitation Society, Bandra. If we look at it seriously, the 500 meter CRZ limit does not serve any purpose. Before the CRZ stumbling block gets solved or dissolved merely by political and financial string pulling, can plan something for the benefit of Mumbai? Note: your comment invited on the said topic.
Posted on: Wed, 28 Aug 2013 11:17:07 +0000
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