'Rivers, not rains, ravished the city'

Blame it on the city's rivers. From Kalyan to Kalina and Kurla, the Ulhas, Mithi, Oshiwara and Dahisar rivers overflowed their banks to spread death and destruction over the commercial hub of the country last week.

With nearly 225 to 300 acre of new land coming under concrete every year, the rivers and the creeks "" Vasai, Thane, Malad, Gorai Mahim and Sion "" have nowhere to go, argue environmentalists. These are the water bodies that connect the original islands of the city.

The final nail in the coffin is the Bandra-Worli Sea Link which has led to the blocking of the mouth of the Mahim Creek into which the Mithi river empties.

Ganesh Nochur, former campaign director of Green Peace India, says "We can certainly blame the increasing concretisation of the city for this calamity. In fact, I think it has come a lot later than what we expected."

Assuming that each of the new 8-10 storeyed buildings, that are coming up in the city, occupy an acre of land, then at least 225-300 acre of land is concrertised in the Mumbai Metropolitan area each year.

"This means that much less land is available to absorb water. The fact that roads are being widened all over the city, contributes to the overflow problem," he says.

The Lower Parel area in central Mumbai is a text book example, says Nochur. "Earlier, the mills had a lot of vacant land which absorbed extra precipitation and prevented flooding to large extent. But with all those lands now being taken up for development, without adequate drainage, flooding in this area is bound to increase."

Adds Deepika D'Souza of the India Centre for Human Rights and Law, "The signs have been there for along time but we have just not noticed them. Ever since work began on the Bandra-Worli Sealink, residents of places like Four Bungalows, Yaari Road in Andheri have been complaining that the sea has come much closer to their buildings than it had ever been. It was because the mouth of the Mahim Creek has been closed off to facilitate work on the sealink, the the water took so long to recede."

In 1999, when the Maharashtra State Road Development Corporation Ltd. (MSRDC) got permission to start construction on the Bandra-Worli SeaLink, reclamation work at the mouth of the Mahim Creek began.

In 2001, a feasibility report by the Indian People's Tribunal on Environment and Human Rights said, "By disturbing the natural course of events and redrawing the geography of the Mahim Creek, the link has gradually upset the flow of effluents and floodwaters that drain into the Arabian Sea. Experts say that this in turn may cause the Mithi River, which starts upstream at Powai and runs along the Andheri-Kurla Road to back up and cause inordinate flooding along the adjacent areas".