With illegal sand extraction eating into, and even threatening to divide the Pavoor Uliyakudru island on the Nethravati, the district administration will shut down all nearby make-shift docks to “hit the miners economically”.
During a visit to the island, close to Adyar on the outskirts of the city, on Sunday, Deputy Commissioner A.B. Ibrahim was swamped with complaints from residents of incessant, illegal sand extraction.
As many as 58 families, or around 200 people, reside on the island which can be accessed only by boats.
While at one end of the island is a huge gash that seems to be bifurcating the island; on the other, the river is closing in, consuming trees and land in its wake.
Residents estimated that around 20 acres of the 90-acre island had already been eroded or extracted. A Revenue Department official said that although six sand extraction licenses had lapsed in the stretch, over 500 boats were still being used to illegally extract sand.
The removal of large tracts of sand from the river bed caused the Nethravati to gush down during the monsoons further eroding the island, said the residents who complained of “threats” from the miners. “Moreover, there are pits all over the river now, which affects fishing, as our nets do not scrape the river bed anymore,” said a resident.
Conceding that just an order to ban the extraction will have little effect, Mr. Ibrahim said that officials were grappling with the difficulties of clamping it down.
“The best way is to hit the economics of mining in the region. We will identity and close all the nearby docks where trucks come to collect the sand. This way, we can ensure the extracted sand is not lifted easily…Meanwhile, continued seizure and penalties imposed will make it unviable to mine sand here,” he said.
Additionally, when the sand blocks are allotted in the new sand policy at the end of the year, Mr. Ibrahim directed the mines department not to allot any sand bars or blocks upstream of the island for at least a kilometre length.