A World Bank-funded boat landing centre at Nagore has been constructed and it is ready for inauguration. The work, which was taken up a couple of years ago at an estimate of Rs.10.60 crore, aims at ensuring safety of lives and property of fishermen while landing in shores.
It has safe berthing wharf which is 200 metres long where about 350 fibre boats could be anchored, a beach landing area for 100 metres; a net mending shed, a generator room, toilets for men and women; an administrative block with bank; a locker room, a security chamber besides a parking lot for vehicles.
Located close to the estuary of the Vettar, the work, taken up under the Coastal Disaster Risk Reduction Project (CDRRP), was a great challenge to the authorities in designing the landing centre and executing the work. “The entire area where the landing centre has been constructed was a large ditch with about six to seven metres in depth. We filled the area using the available sand in the area,” an official source told The Hindu here on Friday.
Now, efforts are on to set up a sewage treatment plant which will re-cycle the entire waste water. “A state-of-the-art technique is being adopted to set up the plant so that the water used for washing the entire wharf could be recycled properly,” says the official. While the maximum of the treated water would be used for watering plants at the landing centre, the rest would be let into the Vettar.
The work also involves setting up a groyne for a length of 300 metres which had been executed at an estimate of Rs.11 crores funded by the National Bank for Agricultural and Rural Development. “The groyne will ensure safe landing of boats, free from any disturbance from tides,” says the official. The work was taken up after a study by the Indian Institute of Technology, Chennai.
However, a group of fishermen of Nagore wanted the landing centre to have more infrastructure particularly an additional groyne of equal length of 300 metres. They said the construction of groyne on both sides of the entry point at the estuary would check deposit of sand and prevent the influence of tides on boats. “The problem arising during high tides is quite dangerous both to lives and property,” they said explaining the risk caused by the single groyne in the area. In the absence of a groyne, the sand gets deposited in the landing point causing hardship to fishermen in landing even in a small boat.
