Friday, October 19, 2012

OMR Greens: Our charge against Mantri's

Our next door neighbour at Padur,  OMR and organic farmer Mr R Ranganathan, who has been here since early 1970s, says hundreds of trees - coconut and mango - were slaughtered by Mantri's to pave way for raising our residential complex.
So, what's new in it, doesn't every developer do it ? I would have thought so as well, had  a Mantri resident Mr D Venkatesan (A-block) not e-mailed us a media report citing a statement by Snehal Mantri. She was reported in The Hindu Property Plus (Jan.12, 2008) as saying :
When MDPL took over the land on OMR at Chennai, the entire area looked so green we had second thoughts about building Mantri Synergy there. We then thought of transplantation. There were a total of 165 coconut trees, 24 mango trees and around 140 teak wood trees spread there, and we managed to save 90% of the trees.
A tree count on Mantri Synergy campus appears appropriate.  So that,  when the apartment owners association takes over of assets from Mantri's,  we could seek an account of transplanted trees from Mantri's. Apart from an exercise in 'green' auditing, this has financial implication. The cost of transplanting a tree (at 2008 price level) ranged from Rs,5,000 to Rs.10,000. And the expenses, we assume, was billed to apartment buyers .
Meanwhile OMR Greens would like to see trees planted wherever we can. We could do with some on the sides of our front lawn, for some shade on driveway. Would it be too late to consider planting some, may be neem, in celebration of our 'Go Green' Navarathri ?

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