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Satellite mapping to help rescue GORAI MANGROVES

Times of India 9th June 2011

Images Will Be Compared To Those Taken In 2000 To Identify Encroachments That Occurred After The Cut-Off Year
Viju B | TNN

The government is taking recourse to satellite mapping to save one of the largest mangrove forests along the Gorai creek.
Next week, a survey team from a Pune-based agency will visit the area to study about 10,000 encroachments in Ganpat Patil Nagar, including shanties, which have cut deep into the forest that lies along the link road in Borivli. The team will take the coordinates of every tenement and feed the data into a computer. The computer will compare the data with satellite images of the forest taken in 2000. Tenements whose data will not tally with the images would be deemed illegal. The Pune agency will submit its report to the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation in four weeks.
The cut-off year for legalising encroachments on government land is 1995, but a government affidavit is in the Bombay high court for an extension of the year to 2000. A government official said a favourable decision is expected soon.
The authorities say a majority of the encroachments in the mangrove forest has occurred in the last 15 years. “There were only 400 shanties in a small area in 1995. Today, around 50 acres have been encroached,” said a BMC official. “This is the first time satellite imagery will aid us to investigate illegal structures in a mangrove forest along the Maharashtra coastline.” Some of the structures stand in blatant disregard of Coastal Regulation Zone rules, which do not permit construction within 50 meters of mangroves and creeks. For instance, the Ganpat Patil Nagar slum not only has shanties that serve as homes, but also commercial structures like scrap shops, small industrial units, godowns, medical stores and videogame parlours.
Environmental activists, and Borivli and Dahisar residents who are fighting to save the mangrove forest said local politicians allowed the slum settlement to grow so that they could treat it as a vote bank. Also, they have all along eyed lucrative slum rehabilitation projects. “We have data showing that (a former high-ranking minister) approved a fee waiver for a city survey project to facilitate redevelopment in the encroached area in the forest. Our point was that how could the government allow redevelopment in an area that was illegally occupied? Quite obviously, the builder-politician nexus was at work here.
We then approached the high court, which stayed the survey,” said Harish Pandey, member, New Link Road Residents’ Forum. “There are two kinds of constructions in the forest. Those under 200 sq ft in area, and those around 2,000 sq ft. The latter are partitioned into several units and given on rent by slumlords.” Forum member Dr S P Mathew said it welcomed the government’s mapping initiative and hoped that power and water theft in the locality would come down after the removal of the encroachments. But while the mapping work will help in identifying the encroachments, removing them may not be easy.

A BMC official said that the municipality conducts demolition drives on specific complaints, but difficulties arise since the so called-owners of the targeted structures obtain stays from the courts. “So that the illegal structures in the Gorai mangrove forest can be demolished, we need comprehensive evidence to prove that the structures came up after 2000—contrary to their owners’ claim that they have been present for 25 years.”
SALVAGE WORK
A survey team will visit a Gorai creek mangrove stretch that lies along the link road in Borivli next week
It will study 10,000 encroachments that have cut into the mangroves
The team will take the coordinates of every tenement and feed the data into a computer
The computer will compare the data with satellite images of the mangrove stretch dating back to 2000
Tenements whose data will not tally with the images would be deemed illegal