The Coastal Regulation Zone Notification of 1991

In one line

The first coastal notification was two pages long, forbade almost everything within five hundred metres, and was amended twenty-five times in twenty years.

In the wording a student can write in an examination: the Coastal Regulation Zone Notification of 19 February 1991, S.O. 114(E), issued under clause (d) of sub-rule (3) of rule 5 of the Environment (Protection) Rules 1986, declared the coastal stretches of seas, bays, estuaries, creeks, rivers and backwaters influenced by tidal action up to five hundred metres from the High Tide Line and the land between the Low Tide Line and the High Tide Line to be a Coastal Regulation Zone, listed the activities prohibited within it, classified the zone into four categories with norms for regulating permissible activities, and required the coastal States and Union territories to prepare Coastal Zone Management Plans within one year.

What it declared

The landward extent. Five hundred metres from the High Tide Line along the sea, and the same distance along bays, estuaries, creeks, rivers and backwaters influenced by tidal action, with the distance along tidal influenced water bodies subsequently modified by amendment.

The intertidal zone. The land between the Low Tide Line and the High Tide Line was itself in the zone.

No water area. This is the point most often missed. The notification of 1991 regulated land. The sea itself was outside it, and a water area was brought in only in 2011.

The prohibitions

The list included the setting up of new industries and the expansion of existing ones, with exceptions for those requiring waterfront and foreshore facilities; the manufacture, handling, storage or disposal of hazardous substances; setting up and expansion of fish processing units; setting up and expansion of units for the disposal of wastes and effluents; discharge of untreated wastes and effluents; dumping of city or town waste for landfilling or otherwise; dumping of ash or any wastes from thermal power stations; land reclamation, bunding or disturbing the natural course of sea water with exceptions; mining of sands, rocks and other substrata materials; harvesting or drawal of ground water and construction of mechanisms therefor within two hundred metres of the High Tide Line, with a permission between two hundred and five hundred metres for manual drawal for drinking, horticulture, agriculture and fisheries; construction activities in CRZ-I except as permitted; any construction between the Low Tide Line and the High Tide Line except facilities for carrying treated effluents and waste water discharges into the sea, facilities for carrying sea water for cooling purposes, oil, gas and similar pipelines and facilities essential for activities permitted under the notification; and dressing or altering of sand dunes, hills, natural features including landscape changes for beautification, recreation and other such purposes.