Green monitors have sounded a red alert. For, environmentally, both Calcutta Municipal Corporation (CMC) and Howrah Municipal Corporation (HMC) are “highly sensitive” zones.

This has been stated in black and white by an action plan submitted by the “environment, wetlands, heritage, park and housing sector” of the Calcutta Metropolitan Planning Committee (CMPC).

Under the ‘results’ category, the report lists “lowering of piezometric level (groundwater level), intrusion of saline water in groundwater, increasing air pollution and an overloaded sewage system” as key environment hazards .

That is the effect. The list of causes includes:

• excessive and indiscriminate withdrawal of groundwater

• rapid uncontrolled growth of multi-storeyed buildings on and off the EM Bypass

• limited scope of creating urban greenery in residential areas

• no provision for separate collection of domestic solid waste

• unauthorised garages on narrow roads with high population density.

The report was prepared after “extensive interaction” with urban local bodies in the CMC and HMC areas. Presented and subsequently accepted by the CMPC’s executive committee before the Lok Sabha elections, it will be forwarded shortly to the full committee, chaired by the chief minister.

According to executive committee chairman and minister for urban affairs Asok Bhattacharya, implementation of the report will start only after it is cleared by the CMPC.

But the city cannot afford to wait any longer, warns environment activist Subhash Dutta. “Already, in certain parts of Delhi, Gurgaon, Chandigarh, Ghaziabad and Chennai, rainwater harvesting is mandatory for big housing complexes, industries and schools,” says Dutta. “Something like that must be introduced in Calcutta immediately. Penal action against those flouting environmental norms is essential.”

Most environmentalists feel “the government agencies are either partially or fully responsible for most of the identified problems, be it allowing highrises on the city’s eastern fringes dependent exclusively on groundwater or illegal garages in narrow lanes and bylanes”.

The “absence of clear legal provisions (on groundwater use, for instance) and lack of adequate networking within stakeholder agencies”, complain government officials, push various vital green matters into the grey zone.