Canal bank road: ‘Environmental concerns on heritage park bill addressed’

Govt and conservationists prepare for Supreme Court hearing over road widening.

LAHORE:

The government has addressed some of the concerns brought up by environmentalists about the widening of Canal Bank Road and future development at the Canal green belt, according to the lawyer representing the Punjab government on the matter in the Supreme Court.

Advocate General Ashtar Ausaf Ali said that a clause in the draft Canal Urban Heritage Park Bill allowing the government to de-notify parts of the road to allow development had been removed from the draft. Environmentalists had expressed concern that the clause negated the purpose of the bill, which was to preserve the green belt as a public park for future generations. The draft is currently pending approval from a Punjab Assembly sub-committee.

Ali said that he had met with officials of the Lahore Development Authority (LDA), the Parks and Horticulture Authority (PHA) and the Traffic Engineering and Planning Agency (TEPA) over the last month and they had agreed to develop a thorough and sustainable mechanism for the replanting of trees chopped down for the road widening project. He said that they would identify places on the green belt where the trees could be replanted and they would make sure to plant local trees which provided a suitable habitat for local bird species.

The advocate general said that the Supreme Court had in its decision also demanded that the government improve public transport along the Canal. He said that the government was considering reserving one lane of the road for buses. A public hearing would be held to assess the level of interest in such a service and seek suggestions for locations for bus stops. Once the Bus Rapid Transit System is complete and 1,200 Turkish buses arrive to run on it, the Lahore Transport Company’s CNG buses would be refurbished and run on Canal Bank Road, he said.

He said that a trust would be set up for the Canal green belt, but he would propose that it include “the finest ecologists and botanists from environment science departments” in colleges in Lahore. “It should consist of serious people, not those making noise so they get newspaper space,” he said.

Ali said that Lahore Conservation Society and Lahore Bachao Tehreek representation on the committee was not mandatory. “The Supreme Court issued a 10-point verdict. It did not accept all 18 recommendations of the mediation committee,” he said.

He said the TEPA officials responsible for the Muslim Town and Kalma Chowk flyovers had been given the responsibility of “re-engineering” the Dharampura and PU underpasses, as demanded by the Supreme Court. A consultant has been hired for the project, he said.

Conservation concerns

The Lahore Conservation Society and Lahore Bachao Tehreek maintain that the government violated the Supreme Court’s verdict in its development of Canal Bank Road.

They said that the government had already widened the road at three points beyond Dharampura – at Royal Palm, at Lal Pul and at Chobacha. The government also removed the footpaths from the Punjab University New Campus as well as from Dharampura to Mughalpura.

“There was an agreement between the LBT and the government through the court that a limited number of trees would be chopped off, but the government violated it,” said Ajaz Anwar of the Lahore Conservation Society. “It’s also our mistake. We should have alerted the court from the very beginning.”

He said that LDA’s promise to plant 10 trees for each one removed was far-fetched. “When the green stretch is receding, how can they see this as feasible? They should just focus on preventing further development in the area and planting indigenous trees,” said Anwar.

Kamil Khan Mumtaz, the LCS president, said that the environmental groups had been preparing a contempt petition against the government over the violation of the Supreme Court verdict at the time that the LDA and TEPA had filed their application for further widening of the road. “We should have also agitated when the government went on with the widening plan without forming a representative committee last year,” he said.

Widening Canal Bank Road 

Environmentalist groups including the Lahore Conservation Society and the Lahore Bachao Tehreek moved the Supreme Court last year to stop the Punjab government from widening Canal Bank Road because of the damage it would do to the environment.

The court set up a mediation committee headed by environmentalist Pervez Hassan and, based on its recommendations, allowed “limited widening” of the road on a 6-km stretch between The Mall and Doctors’ Hospital. It also supported other recommendations made by the committee, such as turning the Canal green belt into a public park, declaring the Punjab University New Campus area a slow zone, re-engineering the Dharampura and PU underpasses to improve traffic flow, and forming a trust to manage the green belt.

On September 14, around a year after the verdict, officials of the Lahore Development Authority and the Traffic Engineering and Planning Agency filed applications to the court seeking permission to widen further sections of the road. The chairman of the mediation committee and the environmental groups were asked to comment on the further widening plans. On October 16, Advocate General Ashtar Ausaf Ali is to present the government’s response to those objections at a Supreme Court hearing in Islamabad.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 11^th, 2012.