Environment Clearance in Powai, Mumbai.

Powai's new towers and office blocks commonly exceed the item 8(a) threshold, and many are later phases of layouts sanctioned decades ago. The slopes and the lake's catchment add their own questions: where stormwater will run, how hillsides will be cut, and what will wash into the lake during construction. We add up area over the entire layout, trace drainage paths down to the lake, and deal with the catchment in the first submission, before SEAC has to ask.

Powai grew around its lake, created in the late nineteenth century by damming a stream for the city's water, though it was later dropped from the drinking supply. IIT Bombay occupies a large campus on its shore, and from the late 1980s the planned township of Hiranandani Gardens rose beside it, with towers, offices, schools and hospitals. The forested hills of the national park rise to the north, with Vihar Lake beyond. Mugger crocodiles still live in Powai Lake. Newer towers keep filling the gaps between the township and the hutments climbing the slopes.