Protected status for Hindon and Yamuna floodplains

NOIDA: The UP irrigation department has announced protected status for floodplain areas along all rivers in the state, following an NGT order.
According to a notice issued by the irrigation department on January 15, cities have to demarcate river beds within their limits that have experienced floods even once in 50 years as floodplains. In rural areas, the state will have to mark as floodplains those areas that have faced floods even once in 25 years.
The notice is a major win for applicants of an ongoing litigation at the green court, with environmentalist Akash Vashisht on one side and the UP environment ministry, irrigation department, police, NCT of Delhi and Haryana water resources ministry on the other. It was filed in April 2013, under sections 14 and 15 of the National Green Tribunal Act, to demand removal of illegal constructions along the Yamuna and restitution of the Yamuna and Hindon river systems by respondents.
"Marking of floodplains along Yamuna and Hindon is key to stopping illegal constructions. Recent Kashmir and Uttarkhand floods were all due to riverbed encroachments. These have to stop," said Amit Khemka, Vashisht's advocate.
The Yamuna floodplain demarcation will spell doom for hundreds of farmhouses in Gautam Budh Nagar and factories along Hindon in Ghaziabad. Demolition of the constructions along the bed could soon be in order. According to the application, a floodplain is the land along a river that has gone underwater during a '100-year flood', defined as flooding at least once in a 100-year period.
"Floodplains are an integral part of a river's ecosystem. Land sharks have illegally sold-off large parts of Yamuna's floodplains in UP, Delhi and Haryana as plots and farmhouses, and almost the entire stretch along Hindon, especially in Ghaziabad and GB Nagar districts. Daily, lakhs of bricks are brought into the Hindon and Yamuna floodplains and used to illegally raise permanent structures. Concretizing such an eco-sensitive zone has far-reaching implications," the application said.
The application said 4,000 acres of Yamuna floodplains have been usurped in Noida. Farmhouses and plants for crushing, hot-mix, concrete ready-mix and quartzite-washing have come up inside the river bed in the middle of the river's main stream.
"Colonies have come up in villages like Karhera, Nand Gram, Ghukna, Sihani, Saddiqnagar, Noornagar, Arthala, Kanawani, Chhajarsi, etc, along Hindon in Ghaziabad and Yamuna in GB Nagar. Floodplains have also been concretized in villages like Dostpur Mangrauli Bangar, Shafipur, etc, in the Hindon-Yamuna doab bund," it read.
"Urban settlements, encroachments and development in upstream areas of reservoirs/water bodies and aquifer recharge areas that pose a potential threat of contamination
, should be strictly regulated," the prayer stated.
The fate of the illegal constructions will be decided in the next hearing of the case in the NGT, the date for which is not yet fixed. But they are clearly on borrowed time.