Standing on a small concrete bridge, environmental activist Janak Daftary gestures toward the crowded banks of the Mithi River, which runs through the heart of Mumbai.
On one side are garages with heaps of car parts that slope into the river, bleeding paint, metals, and oil into the Mithi, a mere 120 feet wide at this point. On the other side are shanties made of brick, tin, and plastic; metal scrap dealers; and a middle-class housing complex flanked by concrete walls that plunge into the water. Below the bridge, a dark slurry with floating bits of plastic, cloth, and rubber slowly passes downstream, toward the office buildings and construction cranes of Mumbai’s new financial district.
“This is how you kill a river,” says Daftary, an engineer who works with Jal Biradari, a water conservation group.
Along with Vanashakti, a Mumbai-based environmental organization, Daftary’s NGO prevailed in a case in India’s Supreme Court last August involving the restoration of the Mithi. The top court reprimanded the local authorities for their neglect and directed independent experts to assess measures taken to date and recommend additional remedies to reverse the degradation of the Mithi.
Read more at Yale Environment 360
Photo credit: Trinidade via Wikimedia Commons
