Ship crash: Jairam Ramesh visits oil spill site
14 Aug 2010
A week after the ship collision off the Mumbai coast, union minister for environment and forests Jairam Ramesh today visited the site of the oil spill to take stock of the salvage operations, accompanied by Maharashtra environment minister Suresh Shetty (See: Oil spill: Chitra captain gets bail; blames Khalija)
Both expressed concern over the extensive damage to the environment and the coastal areas of Mumbai, Raigad and Thane districts.
Ramesh is to hold a review meeting on the Mumbai oil slick and address media persons later in the day.
The minister said that the mangroves along the coast have been damaged extensively due to the spill, and only some of them will be able to regenerate.
Shetty said that other mangroves in the 25-km stretch will be replanted after they receive the damage assessment report next week.
In the meantime, several workers of the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) along with the Coast Guard undertook clean-up operations at the site of the oil spill today.
Almost a week after the two ships collided off the Mumbai coast, a convoy of 10 ships was piloted out of the Mumbai Port Trust (MbPT) and Jawaharlal Nehru Port Trust (JNPT) Friday, a day after partial operations were restored on both JNPT and Mumbai harbour.
The oil spilled from the listing Panamanian cargo carrier, MSC Chitra along with a number of containers after its collision with a St Kitts-flagged vessel, MV Khalijia-III, just outside the Mumbai harbour last on Saturday.
