‘Lavasa could badly affect ecology’

Anti-corruption crusader Anna Hazare and social activist Medha Patkar made a strong and emotive presentation to the ministry of environment and forests (MoEF) team on Thursday, the second day of the team’s inspection tour of Lavasa Lake City project in Mose valley, near Pune.

Raising multiple points, Patkar said the Lavasa Corporation had violated environmental rules and regulations. She criticised the state government for giving a private corporation the ‘special planning authority’ to develop the manmade hill station.

Patkar said the company had violated all environmental norms by excavating hills, uprooting trees and flattening the ‘Nasa’ point, which was over the prohibited 1,000m (above sea level) height. She also alleged that Lavasa was planning to construct 10 dams inside a river valley.

“If this is the face of modern Indian cities, like what Lavasa chairman Ajit Gulabchand had claimed, then India is in grave danger. We could lose the entire Western Ghats to many more Lavasas,” she said.

The seven-member MoEF delegation is led by member-secretary, Naresh Dayal, and includes the ministry’s environment impact assessment advisor, Nalini Bhat, and scientist and MoEF director, Bharat Bhushan, among other officials.

Patkar said that several influential politicians had purchased  lakhs of hectares of land across the Western Ghats and if the Lavasa project was allowed to go ahead,  many more similar projects would come up destroying the ecology of the Western Ghats.

Drawing attention to the construction of a dam across the Mose river near Gadle village near Mugaon, Patkar claimed that the contract for constructing 10 dams in the Mose valley had been given to Raj Group, which was run by a relative of the chairman of the state government’s Krishna Valley Irrigation Corporation, Ram Raje Nimbalkar.

She said that constructing a city inside a river valley could not be allowed without the central government’s approval.

Patkar, who is famous internationally for influencing the World Bank to change its policy on big dams, said, “One wonders how Lavasa was given the green signal for most projects within 24 hours, whereas the government takes months to sanction permission for a even a simple well.”

Anti-corruption crusader Anna Hazare, who also spoke on the occasion, expressed concern at the destruction of trees on hill slopes and warned of the resultant soil erosion and silt accumulation in downstream dams. “Pune city could face an acute water shortage in the coming years due to this problem,” he said.
Echoing the concerns raised by Patkar, Hazare said,

“Non-resident Indians have bought land from poor villagers in the Mose valley at very low rates. Social considerations have been given short shrift. This is a very dangerous trend.”