The chief executive officer of the Noida International Airport Limited (NIAL), Arun Vir Singh, on Wednesday directed his staff to identify areas for compensatory afforestation and development of ponds and wildlife habitats. The NIAL, administration and other government bodies need around 46 hectares of land for afforestation and creation of ponds, officials said.
To seek environmental clearance for the proposed Jewar Greenfield airport project from the Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change (MoEFCC), the NIAL needs to transplant trees and replace natural water bodies, including ponds and canals, to ensure the project does not damage the ecology in this region—one of the largest natural habitats of the sarus crane, the state bird of Uttar Pradesh.
As per a survey, there are at least 7,000 fully grown trees, which need to be felled. Apart from this, 14 natural ponds and one canal will have to be leveled to make space for the Noida greenfield international airport at Jewar. The NIAL has said it would plant 10% more trees than it fells for the four-phase project.
“We will identify land notified for green land use in the master plan. We need about 40 hectares to plant around 8,000 saplings in lieu of trees to be felled. To create 14 ponds we need another 6 hectares. We will soon identify the total 46 hectares of land so that the work on plantation and creation of ponds can be started,” NIAL chief said.
As per the detailed project report, the NIAL needs 1239.14 hectares from six villages for Phase 1 and, on the whole, it needs about 5,000 hectares to build the second international airport in the national capital region after Delhi’s IGI Airport.
As per the rules, space must be created for ponds and trees on green land, and this land should be outside the 5000 hectares where the airport is proposed to come up.
“We are identifying land outside the 5000 hectares of agricultural land of 39 villages because airport will use this area once it will reach its fourth phase with eight runways,” said a Yeida official. The land department is currently in the process of earmarking the 5000 hectares for the project to ensure afforestation is carried out outside this periphery, officials said.
Meanwhile, experts have objected to NIAL’s decision to plant sapling with an average age of one year, saying that their survival rate is quite low.
“NIAL and other agencies involved should transplant the trees because saplings will take time to grow up and will not be able to compensate for the loss of green cover,” environmentalist Vikrant Tongad said.
Gaurav Bansal, an advocate for environmental issues, said, “The survival rate of saplings is only 40%. We demand that they plant at least two times the number of trees cut for the airport project.”
Meanwhile, the administration has levelled over 100 hectares of agricultural land and work to level the remaining land is on before it is handed over to Zurich International AG, a Swiss company whose bid won it the right to build and maintain the Jewar project.
