Kendrapara: With the monsoon just days away from arriving in the state, seaside villagers of Rajnagar block have started spending sleepless nights thinking of the possible onslaught of sea though a sea wall at Pentha would be completed within 10 days, a report said.
The geo synthetic tube sea wall being constructed across Pentha coast at an estimated cost of Rs 32.95 crore under the Integrated Coastal Zone Management Project will protect the lives and properties of 41,222 persons of 56 villages under Rajnagar block from the marauding sea. The project is designed by experts from IIT, Chennai.
However, according to villagers, some of the stones kept in the gabion box and laid along the coast have been devoured by the sea during high tide as the high tensile rope used in the gabion box failed to keep the stones intact. High tensile ropes were found floating on the sea after high tide. The villagers of Pentha have raised questions on the ambitious project’s durability.
Executive engineer of Aul saline embankment, Jugal Kishore Tripathy, said to protect the geo synthetic tube wall, it has been decided to set up a protective layer in front of it. Huge boulders would be laid in front of the sea wall to protect it. An estimated Rs 3.97 crores would be spent for the protective layer. Tender in this regard has already been opened and shortly the work would commence.
Besides, to protect the wall from possible ingress of seawater through river Hansua, a proposal is going to be submitted to World Bank under the National Cyclone Risk Mitigation Project (NCRMP) Phase II, Tripathy said.
The height of the embankments on both sides of Hansua is only 3.5 metre which is not enough to check seawater ingression. In order to keep the seawall intact and protect it from behind, it has been decided that the height of embankments on both sides of the river would be increased to 5 to 6 metres. A slope-like structure with stone gabion packing would be erected along the17 km long embankment from Baruni mouth to Rajnagar.
A proposal in this regard with an estimated cost of Rs 110 crore would be made to World Bank. The proposal is with the government though a preliminary discussion in this regard has been made with World Bank officials, Tripathy said.
Apart from this, a proposal with an estimated cost of Rs 24 crore is in pipeline under NCRMP Phase II to strengthen the 10.5 km long sea embankment of Satabhaya to protect agriculture land from sea erosion, the engineer said. PNN
