Navi Mumbai Airport: Cidco readies for project take-off.

For a little over two decades, the airport has remained on paper. The mere proposal has helped local builders sell housing projects and politicians to win elections. Earlier this month, with the GVK group winning the bid for its construction, it is now on way to becoming a reality. For executives and engineers of the City and Industrial Development Corporation (Cidco), the state agency in charge of the project, the award brings a sense of relief.

A survey to measure ground elevation has been done and the boundaries demarcated. Actual work on the site awaits the Union environment ministry’s approval. “We are expecting stage-II forest clearance in 15 days,' said Cidco’s joint managing director, Prajakta Lavangare. She denied that affected villagers were opposing the works. Cidco had, she said, given written assurances to them while accepting their demands for relief and rehabilitation.

Cidco expects pre-development work on the site to start next month and the airport to be ready for operations by 2019-end. However, aviation experts believe this is not realistic and expect five years for completion.

Further delays would be costly. The existing Mumbai airport is facing capacity constraints and has been turning down requests for slots from domestic airlines. In the current financial year, the airport is expected to handle 46 million passengers; next year, this could be 50 million. Consultancy CAPA estimates Mumbai airport to be saturated in 2017-18. The date of completion would depend on how quickly the site is prepared. The work is enormous. It involves diversion of a river, shifting of two power transmission lines and making 1,160 hectares of marsh land and mud flats ready for construction of a terminal building and runway. A single hillock covering 350 hectares will be blasted and flattened; a total of 35 million cubic metres of rockfill will be used for raising the land. Daily 70,000 to 100,000 cubic metres of rockfill will be made available for use. The airport site is low-lying, with an elevation of only zero to two metres above the mean sea level. The contractors will have to raise the level to 5.5 metres. Subsequently, it will be raised to eight metres, after the detailed layout of airport and utilities is prepared.

The pre-development work has been divided in three components. It has been awarded to the GVK group, Gayatri Projects and Thakur Infraprojects, and J M Mhatre Infra.

Cidco officials insist work can commence next month and needn’t wait till the affected villages are shifted. In all 3,500 families reside in 10 affected villages and Cidco Managing Director Bhushan Gagrani says shifting would be done by end-June.

Two of the 10 villages (Vaghivli and Upper Owale) are close to the hillock in question. “We will take adequate precautions and take the help of the Central Institute for Fuel and Mining Research to design blasting operations and for mitigation,' a Cidco official said. Vibrations and seismographic impact from the operations will be mapped.

BS