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Time of India
10-06-2025
- General
- Time of India
Vishwamitri revival must include entire floodplain: Experts
Vadodara: The Gujarat State Human Rights Commission (GSHRC) appointed a five-member expert committee to oversee and advise on the restoration of the Vishwamitri river. The experts emphasized that work on the river should extend beyond its banks to include the entire floodplain. The commission tasked the group with submitting regular progress reports. Since then, the experts have been conducting site visits, meeting with officials, and offering recommendations regarding the project. The committee includes environmentalist Rohit Prajapati; environmental and urban planner Neha Sarwate; zoologist Ranjitsinh Devkar; botanist Jitendra Gavali; and architect and urban planner Mitesh Panchal. In their initial and supplementary reports, the experts noted that current activities along the riverbanks should be seen as preliminary steps toward fulfilling the National Green Tribunal's directives on the Vishwamitri river. They highlighted that the river's floodplain encompasses vital ecological features such as ravines, wetlands and oxbow lakes. The reports observed that the current focus appears to be primarily on the removal of silt and soil. While acknowledging the importance of this task over time, the experts cautioned that such soil plays a crucial role in maintaining the river's ecological health and integrity. They stressed that the removal of debris and municipal solid waste should take precedence, as these are major pollutants that hinder the river system's functionality. Several areas along the river still contain such waste. The reports also addressed delays in the project, attributing them to setbacks in securing permissions, finalizing tenders, and implementing work on the ground. These delays, the experts concluded, have contributed to compromises and shortcomings in the project's progress. Sewage contamination takes a backseat While flood mitigation has remained the primary focus of the Vishwamitri river project, the issue of sewage pollution appears to have been largely overlooked. According to the expert committee appointed by the Gujarat State Human Rights Commission, the discharge of untreated and partially treated sewage into the river has not been adequately addressed in the context of its rejuvenation. The report further states that directives issued by the Supreme Court and the National Green Tribunal are not being implemented in letter and spirit. Bridges identified as major bottlenecks The expert committee's reports revealed that the re-sectioning and desilting activities have exposed two existing bridges as significant bottlenecks in the river's flow. These include the old bridge near Siddharth Bungalows in Sama and the Kala Ghoda Bridge. The reports also highlight how ongoing infrastructure projects — such as those by the National Highways Authority of India and the Bullet Train project — have created obstructions within the riverine zone and disrupted natural stormwater drainage paths.
Indian Express
23-05-2025
- General
- Indian Express
15.52 lakh cubic metres silt removed, Vadodara civic body to install coir nets on Vishwamitri banks to prevent erosion
With the June 15 deadline for the Vishwamitri river revival and flood mitigation project drawing closer, the Vadodara Municipal Corporation (VMC) has removed 15.52 lakh cubic metres of silt from the water body. To prevent a washout during monsoon, the civic body has decided to install coir nets for riverbank stabilisation. Notably, the amount of silt removed from the river is only half of the 34.98 lakh cubic metre of sludge extracted from different water bodies, including lakes, reservoirs and drains, in the city as part of the project. The civic body, meanwhile, said that 90% of the work on the Vishwamitri project had been completed. The VMC has issued tenders to procure 1.35 lakh square meters of high-strength erosion control coir mats that will enable stabilisation and reinforcement of the riverbank once the ongoing work of desilting and dredging is complete. Experts said coir matting is helpful in holding the soil in place. In a statement, the civic body said, 'Following the work of resurfacing, currently ongoing in the Vishwamitri river, in order to arrest the erosion of the river bank, installation of 1.35 lakh square meters of coir will be undertaken… Similarly, directions have been issued to dismantle the ramps created for movement of machines at 60 points along the riverbank, immediately after the completion of the work.' The VMC said, 'The work is currently on in the last phase, and close to 15.15 lakh cubic metres of silt has been removed while about five kilometre stretch is now remaining to be completed.' On Friday, the VMC said that it had extracted a total of 34.69 lakh cubic metres of silt during simultaneous projects — the deepening of the Ajwa and Pratappura reservoirs, creation of pond in Dena, dredging of the lakes in the city as well as clearing of various storm water drains. A total of 8.5 lakh cubic metre and 3.92 lakh cubic metre of silt was removed from Pratappura and Ajwa reservoirs, respectively. The VMC further said it had cleared 175 hectares of shrubs from around the river periphery. The civic body stated that a total of 967 metric tonnes of plastic waste had been extracted from the Vishwamitri river during the ongoing desilting and re-sectioning work, which has been sent for processing and recycling to the authorised agency of the Gujarat Pollution Control Board. Speaking to The Indian Express, Rohit Prajapati of Paryavaran Suraksha Samiti said that the installation of coir mats was one of the significant steps in the restoration of the river. It was on the petition of this organisation that the National Green Tribunal (NGT) had issued directions on implementation of the 'Vishwamitri River Action Plan', including the action points. Prajapati, who is part of the committee appointed by the Gujarat State Human Rights Commission (SHRC) to supervise the project and submit a report every fortnight, said, 'The installation of the coir mats is a mandatory step recommended by city-based environmentalists as per the order of the NGT. It is necessary and therefore, the civic body has accepted the recommendation and tendered for the same.' Urban planner Neha Sarwate, who is part of the Paryavaran Suraksha Samiti, explained that coir mats dissolve in the soil over a period of time after anchoring vegetation growth to prevent erosion. 'The coir matting for bank stabilisation is helpful in holding the soil in place and also anchors vegetation. For alluvial plain and clay soil as in Vadodara's Vishwamitri river bank, the coir matting will be a protective layer as steep slopes need to be stabilised. It usually stays for two years and then dissolves into the soil…,' she told The Indian Express.
Indian Express
20-05-2025
- Business
- Indian Express
A win for the environment
Environment clearances are guardrails that ensure developmental projects do not injure ecosystems, wildlife and natural resources and harm people's health. One of the defining elements of the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) Rules of 2006, these screenings were meant to enable policymakers to strike the right balance between the imperatives of development and sustainability. The precautionary principle behind this provision has, however, been substantially undermined in the past eight years. In 2017, the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change issued a notification that allowed developers to obtain an environmental clearance after beginning work on a project. The notification provided a one-time window to defaulters to comply with due procedure. However, in the process, it inaugurated a regime of post-facto clearances, which was consolidated in 2021 when the Centre issued an Office Memorandum (OM) to 'identify' and 'handle' violation cases. Now, the Supreme Court has called out the government for 'going out of its way… to protect those who harm the environment'. On May 16, a two-judge-bench struck down the 2017 notification and the 2021 OM. The verdict is not the first time that the SC has admonished the Centre for diluting the EIA. In Common Cause vs Union of India (2017), a two-judge-bench ruled that the government had committed 'serious lapses' in allowing large-scale mining to be 'carried on without forest and environmental clearances'. Such 'violations of laws and policy need to be prevented,' it underlined. Three years later, in Alembic Pharmaceuticals vs Rohit Prajapati, the Court held that post-facto clearances go against the 'fundamental principles of environmental jurisprudence', and that they were an 'anathema to the EIA notification'. Then, in January last year, the SC stayed the 2021 OM. However, as an analysis by this newspaper in February revealed, the regulatory laxity precipitated by the 2017 notification allowed more than 50 defaulting projects to go unpunished — coal, iron and bauxite mines, steel and iron factories, cement plants and limestone quarries were approved without proper scrutiny of their impacts on people's health and ecology. The weakening of the EIA goes against the SC's environmental jurisprudence, where it has continuously expanded the scope of Article 21 to include the right to a healthy environment. In its latest verdict, too, the Court has drawn attention to urban India's pollution crisis and reaffirmed the links between regulatory diligence and the Right to Life. The problem, however, is that governments tend to view sustainability and development as binaries — their ease-of-doing-business drives very often pay short shrift to the imperatives of environmental protection. The Court has rightly questioned the tendency to see industry and ecology as locked in a zero-sum game. Its words — 'conservation of the environment and its improvement is an essential part of the concept of development' — must resonate among policymakers and inform regulatory processes.
