Mumbai’s dumpsites occupy costly land; thwart housing plans
MUMBAI: Which global city uses prime real estate nearly the size of New York’s Central Park simply to dump trash on?
The land-starved peninsula discards more than 12,000 tons (11,000 metric tons) of refuse every day in three dump yards that together occupy more than 740 acres. At going market rates, that land would be worth as much as US$4.4 billion (RM17 billion) if it were sold and used for housing. Meanwhile, 6.5 million people, or half of Mumbai’s population, live in slums without basic sanitation or safe drinking water.
Mumbai’s landfills underscore the need to put scarce resources to optimal use if Prime Minister Narendra Modi is going to succeed in his goal of building everyone a home by 2022. He aims to create 100 smart cities while tidying up the country under his Swachh Bharat Abhiyaan, which translates as Clean India Mission.
“Dump yard re-development is very crucial,” said Anshuman Magazine, chairman at realty consultancy CBRE South Asia Ltd. “The only way to check prices in Mumbai is by increasing supply. There is no other magic to it.”
An average Indian would have work for three centuries to pay for a luxury home in Mumbai, a study by Knight Frank LLP had found by comparing home costs with average annual incomes, making it the least affordable
At going market rates, that land would be worth as much as US$4.4 billion (RM17 billion) if it were sold and used for housing.
city in the world for locals. Shanghai buyers would need 233 years, according to the latestavailable study in 2012.
“Housing in Mumbai is more of an affordability gap than scarcity per se,” said Ashutosh Limaye, Jones Lang LaSalle India’s national director of research.
Half of Mumbai households earn less than 20,000 rupees (RM1,190) a month, a report by the non-profit Praja Foundation and supported by the Ford Foundation had found in November. The state agency is so slow in building homes for the poor, the study said, that it would take 140 years to provide for all.
Meanwhile the Deonar dump site, Asia’s biggest and arguably oldest that opened in 1927, sits on 326 acres in eastern Mumbai and takes half of the city’s daily refuse. Its trash mountain is so high it could bury the White House – twice over.
A smaller landfill in Mulund occupies about 62 acres while a 353-acre one is further north in Kanjurmarg. Initially on Mumbai’s outskirts, the landfills over time were incorporated into the city limits and now occupy expensive, strategic real estate.
According to land prices provided by an annual state government estimate, these sites could be worth as much as US$4.4 billion combined.
Yet the land, if redeveloped, must price in a steep discount, as it would take years of cleanup and land preparation before anything could be built on it, said Jones Lang LaSalle’s Limaye.
Rustomjee Group, a real estate developer with more than 10 million square feet of completed projects across Mumbai, skipped opportunities in Mulund and Deonar, despite the areas’ connectivity to the downtown area by rail and highway. “We consciously stayed away as we believe it is unhealthy ground, and living close to that will cause nothing but pain and heartache for the people,” said Boman Irani, Rustomjee’s chairman.
The office of Rajendra Wale, deputy municipal commissioner at the Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai, said Wale declined to comment.
Dump yards contaminate air and leach into the water table, making life hard for those who live close by.
A state-run primary school across the road from Deonar dump resorted to having municipal water tankers bring in drinking water a few months ago. The tap water became yellow and smelly, said a teacher at Gayak Rafi Nagar Urdu Municipal school, with 700 students ages five through 13.
Many children accompany their parents into the dump to pick through the waste and scavenge for recyclables to sell. They frequently get boils, sores and respiratory ailments, the teacher said, refusing to be identified as he is a municipal employee not authorised to speak to the media. Every student is given a tetanus shot once a year as a precaution, he said. — WP-Bloomberg