Green Belt Development for Industries in Dombivli MIDC Phase I, Kalyan-Dombivli.

In Phase I a green belt is often the only thing standing between a reactor shed and the building across the road. Most plots here have thin margins, and many of those have since been paved. We find the ground that remains along boundaries and at road frontages, plant dense evergreen rows along the housing side, using species hardy enough for chemical-laden air. Trees are mapped and counted, so the belt shown in the consent is the one that stands.

Phase I is the older half of the MIDC estate in Dombivli East, laid out when paddy fields and open ground still surrounded it. Its plots hold chemical, dye, textile processing and engineering units, most of them owner-run, with reactor sheds, drum yards and boiler chimneys set close together. The estate was planned with its own residential zone, and that housing has since filled in and grown upward, so apartment blocks now overlook working plants across a single road. Its units send their wastewater on to a shared plant for final treatment. Several older units have shut or changed hands, and their sheds have found new occupiers.