Activist raises alarm over concretisation of city roads & its impact on environment | Mumbai News

Mumbai: Activist Zoru Bhathena, known for his past battles with authorities over the city’s green cover, sent a letter to the BMC commissioner on Thursday, raising concerns about ongoing road concretisation work.
He mentioned that Mumbai will be facing an environmental challenge of unseen proportions in the coming days due to this city-wide ‘let’s-cement-everything drive’. “The lack of space to plant new trees will cement this damage and destruction for decades to come. Cementing every road and side strip is completely unnecessary and will cause untold misery to our city in the immediate future. All this cementing will also aggravate flooding, not reduce it. The poor quality of all this work-in-progress is something that cannot be easily undone,” he said.
The commissioner has forwarded Bhathena’s email to one of the additional commissioners for review. On the day of the civic budget on Feb 4, the BMC chief said that if residents have concerns over road concretisation works in their locality, the same would be reviewed. “The noise and dust pollution in Mumbai, due to all this unnecessary work, has reached epic proportions. But the biggest casualty of all this needless work is the roadside tree cover. Tree roots are being ruthlessly cut everywhere. Hundreds of trees have fallen in every ward. Thousands more will fall in the first monsoon breeze, as their roots have been hacked away. Cement is spread everywhere, leaving no space for the trees to breathe, nor any space to plant any new trees,” he said.
Currently, in Mumbai, road concreting works are on 1,231 roads spread over two phases. Phase-I works began in January 2023 with 698 roads (324 km), of which 187 are complete, and the rest are ongoing. Phase-II plans to concretise 1,420 roads (377 km), with work on 720 roads starting in December 2024. The BMC targets 75% completion of Phase-I and 50% of Phase-II by June 2025, with full completion by May 2026, it said.
This is all part of the BMC’s mega road concretisation works, which was ordered by former CM Eknath Shinde.