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Futile depredation

In a resource-poor country like India, environment-conscious, democratic and rational alternatives need to be prioritised over costly demolitions that harm nature and life

Futile depredation
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On August 28, 2.30 pm, the twin towers – Apex (103m) and Ceyane (94m), developed illegally in the green belt GH-04, sector 93-A (Noida) by Supertech Ltd — were blown to the ground. Nine years after a residents' association went to court and received a favourable judgement over the illegally built towers, a series of controlled explosions reduced the 100-metre-tall structures to a massive pile of rubble in a matter of just nine seconds. On February 7, 2022, the Supreme Court had ordered the demolition of illegal twin towers, which were constructed in violation of building bylaws.

The entire demolition process was a coordinated exercise by the various central and state government agencies, local authorities, developers, demolition experts, residents and many other stakeholders. The full process of demolition was shown 'live' in almost all the national and regional television channels of the country. The principal demolition agency, Edifice Engineering, based in Mumbai, selected the South African firm Jet Demolitions which is said to be the 'foreign brain' behind the successful razing of the structure in Noida. Joe Brinkman of South African firm Jet Demolitions said, after the successful operation, "India has joined the club of countries that have razed buildings taller than 100 metres", reports LiveMint.

According to reports, the explosives used for the exercise included, among others, detonators like dynamites (straight, ammonia and gelatin), emulsions, PETN (penta-erythritol tetra-nitrate), shock tubes, RDX (Cyclotrimethylene-trinitramine), and explosive material in the form of gel or powder. 3,700 kilograms of explosives were drilled into the building via 9,640 holes. The holes measured 2.634 millimetre. As per a LiveMint report, the quantity of explosives used in destroying these two tall buildings were reportedly equivalent to three warheads of the Agni-V missile, or 12 of the BrahMos missile, or four Prithvi missiles.

It is reported that the two 32-structure buildings were constructed for close to Rs 70 crore, costing close to Rs 933 per square foot (sq. ft) for a total built-up area of 7.5 lakh sq. ft. The financial cost of demolition was around Rs 20 crores. The builder Supertech is told to pay roughly Rs five crore of the demolition costs, and the rest Rs 15 crore will be made by selling the debris, which would weigh over 80,000 tonnes. Re-sustainability — a recycling company has bagged a contract to recycle 30,000 tonnes of waste generated from the demolition of the twin towers over the next three months.

In August 2021, the Supreme Court came down heavily on the realty firm, which allegedly colluded with Noida authority officials and constructed the twin towers in violation of the building norms. Although different agencies have initiated action against the officials, none — either from Supertech Ltd, Noida Authority or the fire department — are in jail. A chargesheet has named 26 officials of the Noida authority for allegedly indulging in graft and an FIR has been registered against the three officials of the Noida fire department, reported India Today.

Earlier, the Supreme Court had ordered a demolition drive against four illegal waterfront apartment complexes in Kerala's Kochi district. The demolition drive of Kochi's Maradu illegal flats was completed using a controlled implosion method. The four concrete colossuses, housing nearly 350 flats, were reduced to piles of rubble in seconds one after another in just two days. Explosives weighing nearly 750 kgs, were used in a controlled manner to bring down the lakeside structures in Maradu, eight months after the apex court ordered their demolition for violation of the Coastal Regulation Zone norms. On the eve of the demolitions, one of the owners had even said: "It is injustice done by a state against its citizens. The government is responsible for this situation."

It may be mentioned that in September 2021, 15 skyscrapers were demolished all at once in China and the jaw-dropping moment caught on camera. According to China's Xinhua news, there were about 4.6 tonnes of explosives that were stored at 85,000 different blasting points which were set around the building. The most shocking thing about the destruction was that the whole process took place within just 45 seconds. Within these few seconds, there was nothing left from the 15 concrete buildings, reports Firstpost.

Impact on environment and health

The huge quantities of waste, clouds of dust, huge sounds and toxic pollutants, generated by the tons of explosives, will have a long-term impact on the environment and health of all the living organisms in Noida and surrounding areas.

Doctors have warned that the immediate effect will be eye problems, coughing, sneezing and dust allergy. Those who already have lung issues such as asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) may witness a bout of illness triggered by the demolition. The rubble will affect the land as much as it will affect the air. The longer the authorities take to clear the rubble, the more will be the degradation of the land and its fertility. In addition to this, the debris, as it settles, will also affect the groundwater. If the situation deters, the effect of the debris on the groundwater can lead to stomach, kidney, and liver-related health issues, reports News 18.

Few medical practitioners are of the opinion that as the season of influenza is approaching, and children, older adults, and pregnant women are prone to it, eligible people must take the influenza vaccine!

It seems that no proper environment impact assessment was done by the competent experts before this massive programme. The entire ecosystem is likely to get affected due to this act of demolition. Environmentalists fear that as blasting generates a series of physicochemical pollutants that can have a significant impact on the habitat and health, demolition's effect on land, trees, and other living organisms might be enormous. For example, birds and the new hatches that were in nearby parks must have suffered and some may have died. Moreover, like humans, the breathing abilities and respiratory functions of the trees are also affected by such blasts, as the leaves and the canopy may be completely covered in dust.

In addition to these, the most important concern is the disposal of around 80,000 tonnes of waste that has been generated in a few seconds. It is said that around 15 acres of land have been marked for storing construction and demolition (C&D) waste. The fear of chemical secretions going underneath and contaminating the underground water is very high, because construction wastes have a lot of chemicals, and these are likely to penetrate the ground. It may also be mentioned that, as experts point out, India has only 1 per cent capacity to recycle its C&D waste and that's a poor status, reports NDTV.

Maradu (Kochi) experience suggests that environmental and health impact of Noida twin tower demolition will have serious long-term impact on the surrounding ecosystem. The main challenge is to ensure that no toxic chemical mixes with the groundwater after this huge waste is dumped as landfills.

Kochi demolition exercise, two years ago, has revealed that the demolition of apartments in Maradu has significantly impacted the water quality and aquatic life of the Vembanad lake. Quoting a research paper, The Hindu reported changes in estuarine water quality following demolition of buildings. The water had turned alkaline after the debris from the first Alfa Serene Tower, weighing around 76,000 tonnes, was made to fall into the backwaters during the second phase of the blast. Turbidity was also found to be high during the study, which was conducted as part of a citizen science project by involving educational and research institutions and the public.

A research study (2021) by Bindu G et al, carried out to assess the impact of implosion of four multi-storied apartments in Maradu on the ambient air, indicated that there was short-term air quality deterioration surrounding the demolition sites. The increase of SPM, PM10 and PM2.5 was above the permissible limits during demolition which reduced afterwards, but was above the ambient level monitored in the pre demolition stage. In the case of SPM, the concentration increased to 3004µgm/m3 during implosion in one of the sites, Golden Kayaloram. This site showed PM10 and PM2.5 also to be above permissible limits during implosion. This is followed by the monitoring sites of Jain Coral Cove, which also showed higher concentration levels above permissible limit during demolition. Other apartments, Alfa Serene and Holyfaith share the same monitoring sites and exceeded permissible limits for SPM and PM2.5 during demolition. In general, more sites reported concentration above permissible limits for PM2.5. The average air quality after three months of implosion showed that the pollutant concentration was much higher than the pre-demolition level. These results clearly show that building implosion has a severe impact on local air quality.

Alternatives to demolition

A resource-poor developing country like India should explore all other possible ways, than demolition, to conserve its natural resources and re-use the same as much as possible. After demolition of the twin towers to ashes, questions are being raised by the concerned citizens whether possible alternative ways were explored by the state and placed before the honourable judges. It is argued that iron, steel, water, cement, sand, aggregates, metals, bricks, etc., used for constructing the buildings, have their footprints in forests, rivers, groundwater, and other natural features, and they suffer because of the extraction and processing of these resources. But in any debate or court argument, this issue was not raised, reports NDTV.

Every concrete building has a minimum of 100 years of life span. Instead of demolishing the illegal buildings the state can take over the same and use them for public welfare. For example, the twin towers could be converted to a state hospital.

One resident of the Maradu building complex, which was demolished two years ago, suggested converting the illegal buildings to homeless shelters ― a just and fair solution the government could have implemented to satisfy the city's homeless.

Ecologists argue that Illegal buildings may be used for vertical farming. Vertical farming is the practice of producing food and medicine in vertically stacked layers. With the city's need for space and a green land, these buildings can be used for farming to the city's needs. Ecologist Dickson Despommier argues that vertical farming is legitimate for environmental reasons. He claims that the cultivation of plant life within skyscrapers will require less embodied energy and produce less pollution than some methods of producing plant life on natural landscapes, reports The Week.

Urban mining: re-using C&D waste

Handling C&D waste as a resource, instead of a waste, is the responsibility of the builders and policymakers. A large number of buildings get demolished during the urban renewal process in the emerging economies of India and China, significantly reducing the average lifespan of buildings and wasting vast amounts of energy and resources. The building industry is responsible for considerable environmental impact due to huge consumption of resources and energy, and for the production of wastes. Environmental experts suggest that Urban Mining/ Circular Economy (CE), a new paradigm, can significantly improve the sustainability of this sector.

Urban mining is the process of recovering and reusing a city's materials. These materials may come from buildings, infrastructure, or products that have become obsolete. When the functional lifetime of an object is over – the car breaks down, the computer is outdated, the building no longer adheres to safety regulations, or a developer just wants to build a new block of flats where an empty office block used to be – the object's materials become available.

Every urban construction project is literally surrounded by useful materials and components. Just as big cities are called the "concrete jungle", the buildings we see all around us are the biggest and most valuable part of any urban mine. Not just concrete, or the steel that reinforces the modern buildings, but the wood, the glass, the copper pipes, the aluminium facades, the roof tiles, the bricks, even the iron railings on our balconies. All of these are valuable finished products that have already gone through a long supply chain.

The concept of urban mining has wider connotations when dealing with sustainable development. In recent years, the concept has been further extended to include recovery of sand and aggregates from the Construction & Demolition (C&D) wastes after the usable metals and the wooden structures have been extracted. In fact, with the restriction being imposed on the mining of natural sources like sand from the riverbeds or destroying hills & rock formations by wanton quarrying, the possibility of extracting construction material from wastes is attracting attention of the authorities. It is estimated that of 50 per cent of the total Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) of any city, the C&D component of the inert part is almost 20 per cent. A conservative estimate shows that sand & gravel form 10-12 per cent of the total MSW of a city.

Although construction waste provides, by far, the highest tonnage in the 'urban mine', everything in the city can be reused at the end of its useful life. Urban mining is widely applied to electronic waste, which contains a wealth of literal gold and other precious metals, as well as to entire products and appliances. Billions of mobile phones are thrown away around the world, many of them perfectly usable, as well as fridges, washing machines, and so much more. In a recent study (2019), Shelley Pandit and this author estimated that e-waste of only four items, TV, computers, cell phones and refrigerator, generated by the households residing in the Kolkata Municipal Corporation, amounted to 7,048.6 MT per annum. This huge waste was primarily managed by over 6,500 personnel in the informal sector and nearly all types of metals and chemicals were recovered from the waste. In 2018, these recovered items had a market value of over Rs 92 crores.

While in the building sector, problems like energy efficiency are being widely explored, urban mining is still a relatively new topic. A study of the construction sector in the Netherlands has found that construction and renovation of buildings in the Netherlands results in an annual demand for 17 million tons of materials, most of which is concrete, followed by steel, bricks and wood. Despite this high demand, only 13 per cent of these input materials are currently coming from secondary and renewable sources. The corresponding figures in China and India are five per cent and 1 per cent respectively.

Handling C&D waste as a resource instead of a waste is the responsibility of the builders and policy makers. First, this new concept of urban mining has to be mainstreamed in the construction and ecological discourse of the country.

Conclusion

Live coverage of the Noida twin tower demolition has sent a clear message to the citizens that the state can demolish in a few seconds, if it desires, any illegal civilian building using enormous amounts of deadly explosives. A public consent in favour of such destruction has been successfully engineered.

The optics has also helped to distract public attention from nexus between state and builders. Following the twin tower demolition, three illegal constructions, boundary walls of four plots among other structures in Farrukh Nagar, Mubarikpur and Taj Nagar area of Gurgaon have been demolished without facing any resistance from the occupants.

But demolition is not a sustainable solution. Instead of using bulldozers, JCB machines and deadly explosives, a democratic and environment-conscious state should explore more sensible tools to penalize illegal builders.

Views expressed are personal

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