Decks cleared for Navi Mumbai

NEW DELHI: What activities harm the 7,000km-long Indian coastline and what should be permitted? Should ports and airports be allowed to come up freely or should even small patches of mangroves be saved at all costs? Answers to such questions could soon be answered with the environment minister setting up a committee under M S Swaminathan to chart out the way for implementing coastal regulations.

MUMBAI: A major hurdle in the path of the proposed Navi Mumbai international airport has been cleared by the Union government. After repeated pleas from chief minister Ashok Chavan and former CM Vilasrao Deshmukh, the Centre has given a huge boost to the airport project by amending the 1991 notification of the Coastal Regulation Zone.

The last hurdle in the way of a second airport for Mumbai, at Navi Mumbai, was cleared by the central government on Monday.

The Union ministry of environment and forests (MoEF) issued a notification granting exemption to the second airport from costal regulatory zone (CRZ) regulations, on the lines of an earlier exemption granted for an airport at Port Blair in the Andamans.

Mumbai The Centre on Monday cleared environment and coastal regulation zone (CRZ) hurdles in the path of the proposed Greenfield Navi Mumbai international airport.

Mumbai City's hope of getting a landfill site to accommodate the 6,000 tonnes garbage it disposes each day seems to be fast diminishing with environmentalists opposing the BMC

Emphasizing the need to bring the Congress party to power at the Centre, Cortalim MLA and Deputy Speaker Mauvin Godinho said that it was only the Congress party that could bring about lasting solution to the contentious CRZ issue.

With the CRZ issue taking the centre stage along the South Goa coastal belt ahead of the April 23 Lok Sabha polls, the Congress has promised to go any extent within the law to protect the houses of people affected by Bombay High Court order regarding CRZ violation.

PANJIM, Apr 4 – In compliance of the High Court order, the Goa government has issued directions to coastal village panchayats to initiate process as per law for taking action in the case of around 4000-odd structures existing between 200 metres and 500 metres from the HTL