05-14-2007, 06:37 AM
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>Project disaster - 1</b>
<i>Nothing justifies the proposed Sethusamudram shipping canal, says
Preeti Sharma.</i>
8 May 2007: It would seem the most natural thing to have a channel
that cuts the sailing time from the east to the west coast and the
west coast to the east by a day and saves a distance of about five
hundred nautical miles. And yet, the proposed Sethusamudram Shipping
Channel Project (SSCP) could turn out India's worst environmental
nightmare, potentially deplete thorium reserves, risk a LTTE-Indian
Navy confrontation drawing India unwillingly into Sri Lanka's civil
war, and become a financial liability.
The Centre and the Tamil Nadu government insist that SSCP will bring
international shipping traffic to the Tuticorin Port. The Port is
situated in the Gulf of Mannar/ Palk Bay/ Palk Strait (GoMPBPS) area
where the maritime boundaries of India and Sri Lanka meet. Presently,
oceanliners skip Tuticorin and instead anchor at Colombo because
GoMPBPS has an average draught of 7.5 metres. Almost in the middle of
this area lies a sandstone reef called Ramar Bridge (Adam's Bridge)
where the draught shallows to less than three metres.
SSCP conceives dredging a one hundred and sixty seven kilometre long,
twelve metre deep and three hundred metre wide channel in this region
cutting through the Ramar Bridge, which has separately angered the
Sangha Parivar. The Tamil Nadu government hopes that this channel will
become an alternative, shorter sea lane to going around Sri Lanka for
ships bound either for Chennai or to South East Asia and beyond.
The state government believes that with Tuticorin, about fifteen
smaller ports will also benefit from international shipping in the
GoMPBPS area. Off and on, security dimensions have been given to SSCP,
but never very convincingly. One argument is that in an Indian Ocean
war, a major rival power could prevent the Indian Western and Eastern
fleet from joining up for common action, and that the SSCP could
prevent this. To this writer, an Indian Navy spokesman did not deny
such a scenario. But he added, "Look, the Navy has nothing to do with
the project. We were not consulted at any stage. It is entirely a
Shipping Ministry project."
On one hand, this would not matter. It is no secret that the Minister
of Shipping, Road, Transport and Highways, T.R.Baalu, of the Dravida
Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK), is pushing the project at the behest of the
Tamil Nadu chief minister, M.Karunanidhi. Perhaps with the exception
of the Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (ADMK) chief, J.Jayalalithaa, no
Tamil Nadu political leader or party is opposed to SSCP. All of them
believe that it will miraculously turn Tuticorin into a trade hub in
the region much like Singapore. Except that our researches show this
won't happen. But rather, that the project would make the peninsular
region more vulnerable to tsunami and provoke unprecedented
environmental degradation.
Not only is SSCP economically unviable, the well known international
tsunami expert, Professor Tadepalli "Tad" S.Murthy, has warned that it
would draw in any tsunami originating in the Sumatra/ Andaman Sea area
to hit the west coast and most devastatingly South Kerala. More
immediately, the project will kill South East Asia and South Asia's
first marine biosphere in the almost still, calm waters of the Gulf of
Mannar. This biosphere is home to more than three thousand six hundred
rare plant and animal species.
Four other factors should weigh in against the project. One is the
confirmed heritage value of the Ramar Bridge, dated by a NASA digital
image to be 17.5 lakh years old, which matches the ancient age of
human settlement in Sri Lanka. Indeed, Sri Lanka sought a bridge on
the stone reef to India. But the proposal came to nothing.
Second, GoMPBPS is a major sedimentation sink for the east coast.
While the causes for the sedimentation are Indian/ Sri Lankan rivers
and long shore currents, what makes the area a sink is perhaps the
Ramar Bridge. It acts as a natural breakwater and forces ocean
currents the longer way around Sri Lanka. By that token, Ramar Bridge
has also made the marine biosphere possible. And now, tsunami experts
by and large agree that the Bridge considerably diminished the
intensity of the 26 December 2004 tsunami. While Nagappattinam north
of GoMPBPS and Kanyakumari to the south were brutally impacted by the
tsunami, places within the region themselves escaped more lightly.
Third, because GoMPBPS is a sedimentation sink, there is frenetic land
building happening to its immediate north. Experts like G.Victor
Rajamanickam, Professor of Earth Sciences at Thanjavur's Tamil
University and India's eminent coastal geo-morphologist and
mineralogist, say that this land building activity will likely connect
Vedaranyam to Sri Lanka's Jaffna peninsula in another four hundred
years. His studies reveal that the Palk Strait has grown shallower by
an astonishing six metres between 1960 and 1986, which would suggest
that this Strait is being silted in at the rate of twenty four
centimetres a year. The Sethusamudram Shipping Channel Project goes
against this natural land building activity, and would ravage a rare
natural breakwater, and condemn the unique environment of the region.
To be continued
Preeti Sharma is Newsinsight. net's Correspondent.
<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<i>Nothing justifies the proposed Sethusamudram shipping canal, says
Preeti Sharma.</i>
8 May 2007: It would seem the most natural thing to have a channel
that cuts the sailing time from the east to the west coast and the
west coast to the east by a day and saves a distance of about five
hundred nautical miles. And yet, the proposed Sethusamudram Shipping
Channel Project (SSCP) could turn out India's worst environmental
nightmare, potentially deplete thorium reserves, risk a LTTE-Indian
Navy confrontation drawing India unwillingly into Sri Lanka's civil
war, and become a financial liability.
The Centre and the Tamil Nadu government insist that SSCP will bring
international shipping traffic to the Tuticorin Port. The Port is
situated in the Gulf of Mannar/ Palk Bay/ Palk Strait (GoMPBPS) area
where the maritime boundaries of India and Sri Lanka meet. Presently,
oceanliners skip Tuticorin and instead anchor at Colombo because
GoMPBPS has an average draught of 7.5 metres. Almost in the middle of
this area lies a sandstone reef called Ramar Bridge (Adam's Bridge)
where the draught shallows to less than three metres.
SSCP conceives dredging a one hundred and sixty seven kilometre long,
twelve metre deep and three hundred metre wide channel in this region
cutting through the Ramar Bridge, which has separately angered the
Sangha Parivar. The Tamil Nadu government hopes that this channel will
become an alternative, shorter sea lane to going around Sri Lanka for
ships bound either for Chennai or to South East Asia and beyond.
The state government believes that with Tuticorin, about fifteen
smaller ports will also benefit from international shipping in the
GoMPBPS area. Off and on, security dimensions have been given to SSCP,
but never very convincingly. One argument is that in an Indian Ocean
war, a major rival power could prevent the Indian Western and Eastern
fleet from joining up for common action, and that the SSCP could
prevent this. To this writer, an Indian Navy spokesman did not deny
such a scenario. But he added, "Look, the Navy has nothing to do with
the project. We were not consulted at any stage. It is entirely a
Shipping Ministry project."
On one hand, this would not matter. It is no secret that the Minister
of Shipping, Road, Transport and Highways, T.R.Baalu, of the Dravida
Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK), is pushing the project at the behest of the
Tamil Nadu chief minister, M.Karunanidhi. Perhaps with the exception
of the Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (ADMK) chief, J.Jayalalithaa, no
Tamil Nadu political leader or party is opposed to SSCP. All of them
believe that it will miraculously turn Tuticorin into a trade hub in
the region much like Singapore. Except that our researches show this
won't happen. But rather, that the project would make the peninsular
region more vulnerable to tsunami and provoke unprecedented
environmental degradation.
Not only is SSCP economically unviable, the well known international
tsunami expert, Professor Tadepalli "Tad" S.Murthy, has warned that it
would draw in any tsunami originating in the Sumatra/ Andaman Sea area
to hit the west coast and most devastatingly South Kerala. More
immediately, the project will kill South East Asia and South Asia's
first marine biosphere in the almost still, calm waters of the Gulf of
Mannar. This biosphere is home to more than three thousand six hundred
rare plant and animal species.
Four other factors should weigh in against the project. One is the
confirmed heritage value of the Ramar Bridge, dated by a NASA digital
image to be 17.5 lakh years old, which matches the ancient age of
human settlement in Sri Lanka. Indeed, Sri Lanka sought a bridge on
the stone reef to India. But the proposal came to nothing.
Second, GoMPBPS is a major sedimentation sink for the east coast.
While the causes for the sedimentation are Indian/ Sri Lankan rivers
and long shore currents, what makes the area a sink is perhaps the
Ramar Bridge. It acts as a natural breakwater and forces ocean
currents the longer way around Sri Lanka. By that token, Ramar Bridge
has also made the marine biosphere possible. And now, tsunami experts
by and large agree that the Bridge considerably diminished the
intensity of the 26 December 2004 tsunami. While Nagappattinam north
of GoMPBPS and Kanyakumari to the south were brutally impacted by the
tsunami, places within the region themselves escaped more lightly.
Third, because GoMPBPS is a sedimentation sink, there is frenetic land
building happening to its immediate north. Experts like G.Victor
Rajamanickam, Professor of Earth Sciences at Thanjavur's Tamil
University and India's eminent coastal geo-morphologist and
mineralogist, say that this land building activity will likely connect
Vedaranyam to Sri Lanka's Jaffna peninsula in another four hundred
years. His studies reveal that the Palk Strait has grown shallower by
an astonishing six metres between 1960 and 1986, which would suggest
that this Strait is being silted in at the rate of twenty four
centimetres a year. The Sethusamudram Shipping Channel Project goes
against this natural land building activity, and would ravage a rare
natural breakwater, and condemn the unique environment of the region.
To be continued
Preeti Sharma is Newsinsight. net's Correspondent.
<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->