Residents oppose move to cut trees for Malabar Hill reservoir, to be taken for site visit today

Meanwhile, the civic body’s move of hacking the trees has met with objections from residents. On Thursday afternoon, a delegation of 15-citizens met the officials of the civic body’s tree authority and urged them to find an alternate policy to take this project ahead.

Pervin Sanghvi, a Malabar Hill resident who was present at Thursday’s meeting, said that the citizens demanded the authorities to walk them through the project. “There was no consultation done with the residents before chalking out the final plan for this project. Therefore, we residents demanded that the officials should take us to the site and explain us how this project is going to be implemented in a way that it is going to cost so many trees,” Sanghvi told The Indian Express.

Another resident, Nilesh Baxi, who had filed an objection about this project with BMC, said that trees that are 90 years old are going to be affected for this project.

“The area behind the Kamala Nehru Park is like a forest and there are trees that are 90 years old. The BMC has proposed to transplant a proportion of the trees at Bhandup. If that is the case, then how will they be able to compensate for the lost green cover of that place ?,” asks Baxi.

“The authorities can also explore the possibility of carrying out construction works through tunnelling works,” he added.

Meanwhile, the civic officials maintained that this project is being chalked out to meet the growing demand of water supply in the city. The civic officials have started the first phase of this project and aim to finish it by the end of this year. The first phase would involve construction of pumping stations in order to ensure that the water supply to Mumbai remains unaffected during the course of reconstruction.

“The primary objective of taking up the rebuilding works is to ensure that the crisis of water shortage is resolved,” said a senior official from the water supply project department.