Two-and-a-half years after fisherfolk in the Ennore-Pulicat region and environmentalists heaved a sigh of relief after the public hearing on the Adani Kattupalli Port expansion was cancelled, they were in for an unpleasant surprise last week. The Tamil Nadu Pollution Control Board (TNPCB) announced that a hearing on the ₹53,031-crore mega port, to be implemented by the Marine Infrastructure Developer Private Limited, was to be held on September 5. Days later, the district authorities postponed the hearing. But fishers’ apprehensions remain.
The #StopAdaniSaveChennai campaign by the Chennai Climate Action Group garnered widespread support on X (formerly Twitter) on Friday, with a “tweet storm” pointed towards Chief Minister M.K. Stalin, appealing to him to stall the port expansion. More than 10,000 posts flooded the social media platform. The resurgence of the resistance to the proposed mega port has brought old pleas and broken promises back to the fore.
What is the project?
According to the ‘Proposed Revised Master Plan Development of Kattupalli Port’, the port’s cargo handling capacity will increase from 24.65 million tonnes per annum (MTPA) to 320 MTPA. The average dredge depth at berths will be 20.5 metres. The revised plan includes handling and storage of multi-purpose cargoes, including liquid, coal, iron ore, bulk, break bulk, project cargo, general cargo, dry cargo containers, fertiliser and RORO and automobiles and any other non-hazardous cargo and liquid, gas, cryogenics (up to -162 degrees Celsius) cargoes.
The revised plan says the port will be developed on a total area of 6,110 acres. This includes 330 acres of the existing area, 1,882 acres of government land, 1,931 acres of private land, and the proposed sea reclamation of 1,967 acres. Apart from the existing breakwaters (1775 m and 1665 m each), two new breakwaters of a total 2100-m length are proposed. For easy evacuation of cargo, new rail and road routes are also proposed within the existing port boundary. Further, there is a plan to develop five berths with a total quay length of ~1,900 m and two port craft berths are approved as part of the existing port. Of them, three berths are constructed and operational.
Livelihood concerns and more
The Citizen Consumer and Civic Action Group says villages like Goonankuppam, Vairavankuppam, Koraikuppan, Lighthouse Nadukuppam, Kadal Kanniyur, Kattupalli, Kalanji, Karungali, Arangankuppan and Thirumalai Nagar are likely to be displaced because of erosion.
File picture of the Larsen and Toubro Shipyard at Kattupalli Port | Photo Credit: Ragu R
The reclamation, which includes the conversion of nearly 2,000 acres of the Ennore Creek and its associated wetlands into industrial real estate, will have a devastating effect on Pulicat, says R. Bharath of Goonankuppam. “Sea erosion is already a problem here. Imagine what will happen when such a huge area of the sea is reclaimed. There will be no trace of Pulicat,” he says.
The areas that are to be reclaimed by dumping dredged sand into the sea have been earmarked as salt pans, mangroves, intertidal areas and No Development Zone (CRZ 1-A, 1-B, CRZ III (NDZ) and CRZ IV) under the approved Coastal Zone Management Plan 2018. In August 2019, a three-member expert sub-committee of the Union Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change, appointed by an Expert Appraisal Committee, surveyed the proposed area for port expansion and said the “majority of the proposed development falls under the erosion zone”. The report also highlighted that the entire Pulicat system, along with the Buckingham Canal and the Ennore Creek, has been designated as an ecologically sensitive area and placed under CRZ-1.
According to the latest shoreline changes assessment report from the National Centre for Coastal Research (NCCR), released in January 2023, 42.7% of Tamil Nadu’s coast is eroding. NCCR researchers stated that both natural events, such as cyclones and sea level rise, and activities, like port, harbour and sea wall construction and sand mining, led to the erosion.
Around 1,802 hectares of the inland area has been lost to the gigantic sea waves at 22 locations, identified as ‘erosion hotspots’. Of these locations, eight are in Tiruvallur and Kancheepuram districts.
Incidentally, fisherfolk have also been objecting to the draft Coastal Zone Management Plan (CZMP) prepared in accordance with the Coastal Zone Regulation (CRZ) Notification, 2019, by the Tamil Nadu State Coastal Zone Management Authority. Fishers say basic components — such as fishing zones in the waterbodies and fishing village boundaries, breeding and spawning grounds of fish, the common properties of the fishermen communities, and detailed plans for long-term housing needs of coastal fisher communities — have not been marked in the CZMP.
The Southern Bench of the National Green Tribunal (NGT), which is hearing a petition filed by Jesu Rathinam and K. Saravanan, pulled up the coastal authorities for the incorrect maps. On August 18, the NGT ordered an interim stay on the public hearings, scheduled for this month, on the draft maps in all coastal districts as they were deemed incomplete.
Mr. Saravanan says that had the draft CZMP included fishing zones, villages, and the breeding areas in Tiruvallur correctly, there would have been a stronger case against the port expansion. The expansion will bring on erosion of the two sand barrier islands, and Pulicat will merge into the Bay of Bengal, he warns.
“The CRZ is meant to protect the coast and the fishers’ livelihood. As per the CRZ Notification, 2011, each District Coastal Zone Management Authority must have three fishers as members. It has been 12 years, but no steps have been taken to include fishers in the Authority,” he says.
The merging of Pulicat, which is protected on one side by the Kattupalli barrier island, into the sea is also a matter of concern over the biodiversity of the lake. Being the second largest brackish water lagoon in the country, Pulicat receives more than 200 bird species, including migrant species. It is also a crucial stopover in the Central Asian Flyway. Environmentalists point out that the proposed port falls 2.1 km from the Pulicat Bird Sanctuary, violating the Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972.
High risk of floods
The damage doesn’t stop with the fishers’ livelihood, the wetlands, or the birds. Chennai city will be at a high risk of floods as the wetlands store rainwater, facilitate groundwater recharge, and protect against deluge, according to Yuvan Aves of Palluyir Trust. Poovulagin Nanbargal, in a statement issued against the port expansion, says that factoring in climate change, the State is likely to face intense rainfall in short periods of time. “The mangroves and waterbodies at Ennore and Pulicat act as reservoirs during heavy rain. When these precious landscapes are encroached upon, Chennai and Tiruvallur will face intense flooding during rain,” it says.
Questions on the need for the project
According to the plan document, the expansion is being done to address the basic infrastructure needed to match the country’s growing GDP. “The Kattupalli port is a strategic complement to our Ennore container terminal, which is getting commissioned next year. Both these ports will substantially help reduce congestion in the region and will thereby contribute to the rapid growth of the State of Tamil Nadu and the surrounding regions,” Gautam Adani was reported to have told the media in 2015.
Murmurs over the need for development and bringing in huge infrastructure projects to Tamil Nadu to become a trillion-dollar economy by 2030, as envisaged by Mr. Stalin, have surfaced in response to the protests. “But there has to be a need, a demonstrable demand for a project,” says Nityanand Jayaraman, of Vettiver Collective, adding that development should be linked to the uplift of the locals.
Mr. Jayaraman points out that the existing ports are not used to their capacity. Data from the Ministry of Shipping show that of the total cargo handling capacity of all Tamil Nadu ports (253.9 MTPA), the total cargo handled during 2019-20 was only 114.9 MTPA, he says.
“As much as 55% of what we have built is lying unused. If we are smart, we would use the existing capacity efficiently,” he says. Questioning the need for spending such a huge sum on a project, Mr. Jayaraman says the mega port will make sense if Chennai Port and Kamarajar Port are closed. In that case, he asks, how will the workers be rehabilitated? The government has to go beyond just promises, he says.
In 2008, the people of Kattupalli protested against the L&T shipyard and port. Forced to choose between forceful eviction and jobs, the fishermen chose the latter. The then DMK government had, in a written letter, promised 140 permanent jobs. But none materialised, they say.
T. Ethiraj, a fisherman from Arangankuppan, has lost faith in being given a permanent job. “We have faced many losses. Since the port came, we have had to dredge the river every year. The river is our mother. If this project comes up, our livelihood will be badly affected,” his dispirited voice trails off.
Poll promise
Among the many concerns raised by fisherfolk is the silence of the ruling Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK). Mr. Stalin had promised before the 2021 Assembly election that if elected to power, the DMK would not allow the Adani port to expand.
On October 16, 2021, as part of ‘Pazhaverkaadu Meen Vizha’, the women of Pulicat served a seafood feast to leaders, including DMK South Chennai MP Thamizhachi Thangapandian, Congress leader and Tiruvallur MP K. Jayakumar, and DMK North Chennai MP Kalanidhi Veerasamy as a token of gratitude and as a reminder of the party’s promise to stall the port expansion. Mr. Veerasamy was one of the few members who had raised the issue in Parliament in 2021, asking the then Union Environment Minister, Prakash Javadekar, whether the Kattupalli port expansion was prohibited under the CRZ Notification as ports are not permitted to be established in a high erosion zone, nor in close proximity to a sanctuary.
He also wrote to the Tiruvallur Collector, alleging that the project was coming up on the eroding coastal stretch, and would threaten the ecologically sensitive Pulicat lake. In his letter, he alleged that the project proposes to usurp over 1,300 hectares of poramboke land, of which more than 1,000 hectares is classified as wetlands, , which cannot be converted into industrial real estate. Mr. Veerasamy, however, refused to comment on the port expansion, when contacted on Saturday.
Despite a long-drawn-out resistance to ports in their sea, Rajalakshmi of Goonankuppam is defiant. Asserting fishers’ rights to the waters, she says they are nothing without the sea. “There are 50,000 of us, fisherfolk, in 13 hamlets. We will continue to fight,” she says.
