MPCB Consent in Wagle Estate MIDC, Thane.

Consent in Wagle Estate is complicated by the buildings themselves. A multi-storey industrial building may hold a dozen galas, each run by a different occupier making something different, and each activity is placed in its own MPCB category: red, orange, green or white. Units that expand into the next gala, or move from dry assembly to a wet process, often shift category without noticing. We read the process on the floor, place it in the right category and file on MPCB's online system.

Wagle Estate is a grid of numbered roads in Thane West, lined with sheds, galas and multi-storey industrial buildings, with the Yeoor hills rising behind. Its units are mostly small and medium (engineering shops, packaging converters, pharmaceutical and chemical formulators) and many share one building, one yard and one drain. Over the years some plots have been rebuilt as IT parks and office blocks, so a machine shop may now stand beside a floor of desks. Dense housing and settlements have grown up along its edges and up the lower slopes, and people now live within a wall's width of working units. The estate is changing tenant by tenant rather than all at once.