The Navi Mumbai airport will be built through public-private partnership on 1,160 hectares of land between Panvel creek and Karnala hills . Estimated to cost more than Rs 9,600 crore, it will cater to 10 million passengers per annum (MPPA) by 2015, 45 MPPA by 2025, and a total of 60 MPPA by 2030. The greenfield airport will have two runways with independent operations and full-length taxiways capable of handling aircraft as large as Airbus 380 .It will have parking space for about 104 aircraft, and provide aerobridges to 77 of them. The cargo apron will have the capacity to host 15 wide-body aircraft There will be more than 150 counters for ticketing and visa clearance .Buses will be run to the airport from the nearest metro, suburban, hovercraft and bus stations. A special Bus Rapid Transit system will be created on the proposed Mumbai Trans-Harbour Link .The project will create 2 lakh new jobs, with one lakh people being employed directly.
THE HIGHS
Under the new plan, non-essential airport facilities will be moved away, sparing 245 hectares of good quality mangroves. The need to divert Gadhi River has been eliminated by reducing the distance between the two runways from 1,800 metres to 1,555 metres. About 310 hectares on the northeast of the airport site will be declared a ‘no development’ zone and converted into a green area by CIDCO .
THE LOWS
Around 98 hectares of what is said to be low quality mangroves will be lost to the runways. The ‘tidally-influenced’ Ulwe River will be diverted, although the government has promised to put in a number of safeguards to minimize environmental impact .A 90m-high hill will be blasted away to enable smooth access to the runaways .
GREEN SIGNALS
The state has vowed to lessen the environmental impact by installing noise-absorbing boundary walls .The rock strata will have special engineering material to reduce noise levels to permissible limits .A system to monitor pollution in creeks and channels will be evolved. All structures in the area will be made energy efficient to cut power consumption by 20% .
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