Mumbai, India – When the primary runway at Navi Mumbai Worldwide Airport turns into operational in late 2024, Mumbai’s second airport will have the ability to deal with 20 million passengers a yr.
As soon as accomplished in 2032, the airport will finally have the ability to cater to 90 million annual passengers.
The airport’s developer and the town’s authorities say the venture is an important piece of infrastructure to ease strain on the prevailing Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Worldwide Airport, which at present caters to almost 50 million passengers every year.
However some aviation consultants and activists are involved that the airport’s location poses a danger to air security. They are saying the location’s proximity to 2 main hen sanctuaries and the feeding spots of a number of species of migratory birds leaves plane weak to hen strikes.
Up to now, their pleas seem to have fallen on deaf ears.
Navi Mumbai Worldwide Airport is being inbuilt Navi Mumbai, a deliberate growth that varieties a part of the broader Mumbai Metropolitan Area, chosen for its proximity to the nation’s monetary capital and worldwide port services. The airport website is near the enterprise district of Belapur, manufacturing hubs reminiscent of Taloja, Patalganga, Ambernath and Roha, and the town of Panvel.
The positioning can also be positioned little greater than 10km (6 miles) from Karnala Hen Sanctuary, residence to greater than 200 species of birds, and near mangroves, mudflats and wetlands that entice migratory birds reminiscent of flamingoes, starlings, buntings and rose-finches. Many of those pure websites are being reclaimed for the development of the airport.
SM Satheesan, an skilled in hen strike prevention, believes the brand new airport’s location makes it “extremely harmful,” particularly when contemplating a hen strike case he investigated in New Delhi some years in the past that occurred removed from any habitat.
“I examined the hen stays and so they belonged to flamingoes, regardless of there being no main flamingo habitats within the space,” Satheesan instructed Al Jazeera. “Now on the Navi Mumbai website, the place there’s a flamingo sanctuary close by, the flamingoes are going to create havoc!”
Satheesan stated that destroying birds’ pure habitats like mudflats and wetlands additionally makes it extra probably they’ll enterprise onto the airport land.
“The runway affords a spot for resting and feeding for birds pushed out of their different typical habitats. It turns into a eating desk … of types the place birds can discover crushed stays of smaller animals, bugs and termites,” he stated.
BN Kumar, head of the environmental advocacy group NatConnect, expressed related issues.
“Migratory birds have excessive website constancy,” Kumar instructed Al Jazeera. “The wetlands due to this fact have to be preserved to make sure that the birds don’t enterprise into the airport space.”
The Metropolis and Industrial Improvement Company (CIDCO), the coordinating physique for the venture, appointed the Bombay Pure Historical past Society (BNHS) to conduct an in depth research of the problem greater than a decade in the past.
Since then, BNHS has been publishing periodic stories about hen habitats and actions, which have been quoted within the Environmental Impression Evaluation report ready by the Adani group, which is developing the airport.
The stories recognized 5 key wetlands within the space: NRI, TS Chanakya, Belpada, Bhendkhal and Panje, and emphasised the significance of preserving them to stop birds from discovering their method both into the flight path of plane or the runway.
“We’re observing excessive tide roosting of birds, throughout the October to Might interval on the wetlands close to NRI and TSC on Palm Seashore Street and the wetlands within the Uran space,” the BNHS stated in its 2014 report.
“These birds have been seen transferring in flocks from roosting websites to the creeks and open mudflats on the seashore for foraging throughout low tide and returning throughout excessive tide.”
Environmentalist Debi Goenka, the founding father of Conservation Motion Belief (CAT), stated he has written to a number of authorities in regards to the concern solely to obtain no reply.
“We had written to the Ministry of Civil Aviation, and the DGCA [Directorate General of Civil Aviation], and sadly, we haven’t even acquired an acknowledgement, not to mention a reply,” Goenka instructed Al Jazeera.
In his letter dated July 24, 2018, Goenka identified that the BNHS report “revealed that the location is positioned within the midst of a particularly hen wealthy habitat. This location is due to this fact extraordinarily unsafe for each air passengers and birds.”
CIDCO didn’t reply to repeated requests for remark.
A spokesperson for Navi Mumbai Worldwide Airport Ltd (NMIAL), the authority liable for constructing, sustaining, and working the airport, stated new roosting websites have been being developed away from the airport to maintain birds away from the location.
“Birds are drawn to roosting websites. Bombay Pure Historical past Society has proposed roosting websites within the earlier stories throughout Thane Creek and South of Jawaharlal Nehru Port Belief, which was away from the airport,” the spokesperson instructed Al Jazeera.
“The websites are being developed as roosting websites to draw and residential the birds away from the airport.”
The spokesperson dismissed issues that the location may very well be liable to hen strikes.
“You will need to observe that the Karnala Hen Sanctuary will not be within the method flight path to the airport,” the spokesperson stated. “Moreover, the mudflats at Sewri throughout Thane Creek are greater than 15 to 16km [9-10 miles] away from the airport.”
Nonetheless, Deepak Apte, a scientist who has studied hen strikes intimately, stated activists are proper to be involved.
“Hen-related accidents are normally uncommon, however in case of this website, these birds are getting squeezed into smaller and smaller areas, forcing them to kind massive flocks,” Apte instructed Al Jazeera.
“Flock administration is a problem. We require refined gear to observe flock motion, particularly given how it’s associated to tidal modifications.”
“Migratory birds observe the identical patterns and relaxation and feed on the similar websites yearly,” Apte added, explaining any modifications to the websites are more likely to have an effect on the motion of hen flocks.
Supporters of the venture level to the necessity to increase Mumbai’s air journey capability.
Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Worldwide Airport — opened within the Nineteen Forties — dealt with 4.5 million passengers and greater than 27,000 flights in January alone, averaging greater than 140,000 passengers and 882 flights daily.
“The passenger rely recorded for the calendar yr 2019 (at CSMIA) was 49.8 million,” the NMIAL spokesperson stated.
Following a quick lull because of the COVID-19 pandemic, passenger site visitors has picked up once more and is projected to hit 49 million by the top of the calendar yr 2023.
“We will likely be operating at peak capability within the subsequent 5 years, which will likely be round 55 million passengers,” the spokesperson stated.
“The Navi Mumbai Worldwide Airport is being developed to serve an final airport capability of 90 million annual passengers, which incorporates home and worldwide passengers. It should even have 2.5 million Metric Tonnes every year of cargo dealing with capability.”
Environmental activists like Goenka, the founding father of CAT, argue a greater website may have been chosen for the town’s second airport, together with a 728-hectare (1,800-acre) website close to the town of Kalyan that was initially developed as an airstrip by the British throughout World Conflict II.
“There was a greater website at Nevali close to Kalyan,” Goenka stated. “It was midway between Mumbai and Pune and would have served each cities.”
“This land was already owned by the Protection Ministry. Furthermore, this land already had an airstrip and would have been simpler to develop in comparison with the Navi Mumbai land the place mangroves are being reclaimed, wetlands and mudflats are endangered, hills must be levelled and rivers diverted for developing the airport.”
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