Kendrapara: From a distance, villages near Bhitarkanika of Kendrapara district looks picture perfect, full of shade trees, tidy homes and a vast beach. However, the picture is not as perfect as it seems to be. Residents of these villages are leading a life of constant panic as the sea is slowly but surely eating up their land. They are asking the Odisha government to take steps to prevent erosion.
“We have moved inwards thrice because the sea is moving forward and gobbling up our land. We have suffered tremendously in the last couple of decades,” Gobinda Pradhan, a 75-year-old man of a village in Rajnagar block, said.
Due to erosion by the sea, 88 square kilometres of mangrove forest in Bhitarkanika have been destroyed from 1960 to 2016. Even though a geo-synthetic sea wall was constructed to protect denizens, it is not serving much purpose. The wall has been damaged and holes have developed due to salt water contamination.
Four years back, the Odisha government had built 600-metre geo-synthetic tube wall under its Integrated Coastal Zone Management (ICZM) programme at an estimated cost of Rs 39 crore with technical support of IIT-Chennai. It was done to protect Pentha village and nearby areas from high tides, cyclones and even tsunami.
The pounding sea waves have gnawed away portions of the geosynthetic tubes that may topple over any time. A fire mishap has also damaged a portion of the wall. As a result of people of 64 villages living along 48 km-long coastline in this district are in a state of panic over the constant erosion of shorelines and Tsunami threat ahead of the rainy season. In it they have also mentioned that the frequency and magnitude of erosion in these areas has also increased in recent years.
Environmentalist Hemanta Kumar Rot said that to save the villages from erosion by the sea, mangrove forests would have been enough. However, the forests are being destroyed for construction of various projects. Hence the magnitude of erosion has increased manifold. Villages like Habelikhati, Satabhya, Nasi and other localities are in danger of being engulfed by the sea.
The environmentalist also warned that rapid farming of prawns in the sea is causing environmental problems. Rout also warned that dumping of chemicals and garbage into the sea will speed up erosion only.
Odisha lost 153.8 kilometres or 28 per cent of its 485-km-long coastline between 1999 and 2016 to sea water ingression, according to a July 2018 study by the National Centre for Coastal Research in Chennai. The study also found that rising sea levels coupled with changing wind patterns are causing high tidal waves and inundating habitable areas.
“Sea water incursion has contaminated wells and increased salinity in the soil, making it less fertile. Coconut trees now yield only a handful of fruit each harvest, instead of dozens,” said Manab Pradhan, a resident of Satabhaya.
People who rely on the water from wells for drinking and bathing have also reported health problems, such as jaundice, stomach, joint and digestive problems and skin diseases. “People are reluctant to marry their daughters off to boys in our village because there is no fresh water here,” Pradhan added.
PNN
