White elephant
The total amount of dredged material for the entire project stands at a whopping 82.5 million cubic metres (mcm). This amount of mud, if spread on land, will create an 82,500 km long wall of one metre width and one metre height. This is one of the biggest dredging projects ever undertaken. By mid-January, "Dredge-12', a dredger of dci, had already removed three mcm of seabed material from the Palk Straits region. The ship is currently dredging the sea floor in the Palk Straits, 25 km off the coast from Point Calimere in Nagapattinam district.
Project authorities say they have made sure that dredging and dumping will not have any adverse impacts. "We have one of the most elaborate of environment monitoring plans in place through which we will continuously monitor various environmental parameters as dredging takes place,' says Raghupathy. "Dispersion modelling studies and flow modelling studies carried out by us clearly show that dumping locations in the sea are available,' he adds. Dredged material from the Adam's Bridge area will be dumped into the sea in the Gulf of Mannar at a location of 30 metres natural depth. The dumping location is 25-30 km away from the dredging location. About 34 mcm of dredged materials from Palk Bay will be dumped off-shore in the Bay of Bengal. Both the dumping locations had been identified by neeri.
"The total quantity of spoils that would come from capital dredging is supposed to be 81.5 to 88.5 x 10 6 cubic metres (cu m). The quantum of dredged spoil that would come from maintenance dredging is supposed to be 0.1 x 10 6 cu m/year. Specific dump sites have been identified only for 8.5 to 9.5 per cent of the total dredged spoil,' says Ramesh in his article. "An idea about the nature of the dredged spoil is available presently only for about 38.5 to 40.5 per cent of the total dredged spoil. No idea exists at present about the nature of the dredged spoil that would be generated for 59.5 to 61.5 per cent of the total dredged material. We do not know the exact dump sites for about 90.5 to 91.5 per cent of the dredged material,' he adds.
But the authorities are quick to counter that this is incorrect and they have identified dumping spots for all the dredged material. "Sedimentation regime in Palk Bay/Palk Straits has been studied through field studies and modelling studies as adequate and relevant for the project setting,' says tpt.
Besides the initial dredging, annual maintenance dredging would also be required to maintain the proper depth of the channel. Authorities say for the first two years, 2 mcm per year of maintenance dredging would be required. That will go down to 1.7 mcm/year in the next two years, before stabilising at 1.4 mcm/year from then on. This raises the issue of continuous sedimentation. "Palk Bay is one of the five major permanent sediment sinks of India... Marine and riverine sources contribute to these sediments. Small rivers draining into Palk Bay off the Sri Lankan and Indian coasts, longshore currents from Bay of Bengal in the north and Gulf of Mannar transport these sediments into the bay,' says Ramesh.
The eia has calculated the net annual sediment transport by longshore currents and tides in the Adam's Bridge area at 0.2657 x 10 6 cu m. The sediment contribution from the rivers is yet to be calculated. These studies indicate that we are yet to pinpoint the sediment source for about 58.4393 x 10 6 cu m (that is, 99.4 per cent) of the total sedimentation volume as indicated by the Chandramohan study, writes Ramesh. tpt dismisses this claim, but there are others who support Ramesh. "Various authors have given contradictory depositional rate values, and all of them from different sites. eia has used the values selectively to come up with an average estimate to suit its conclusions. The fact of the matter is that different stretches of the Palk Bay, through which the alignment of the canal passes, may have variable sedimentation rates,' says C P Rajendran, geologist and palaeo-seismologist at the Centre for Earth Science Studies, Thiruvananthapuram. "The question of cyclonic disturbances in changing the sedimentary budget of the region has not been properly addressed and consequently skews the predicted estimates of the sedimentation pattern and its rate. This means that total amount of material to be dredged could be much more than what had been predicted.'
The channel has been divided into four different sections for award of dredging contracts. Currently, work continues in one section because of the tendering hitches.
Despite all the doubts being raised about the adverse impacts of the project, the authorities are fairly gung-ho about its viability and design. The Rs 2,427 crore project is to be financed by a debt-equity mix of 1.5:1. Equity funding is expected to be Rs 971 crore and debt funding Rs 1,456 crore. The government of India as the 51 per cent shareholding partner will contribute Rs 495 crore. tpt will add Rs 50 crore. The Centre will also guarantee the return of all loans. uti Bank has been appointed the financial advisor and sole arranger for the project.
"We expect the project to pay back within 16 years of the start of operations,' says Raghupathy. He, however, adds this is a conservative estimate and that the pay-back period can be as little as nine years. Revenues will be generated through various charges, of which pilotage will be a significant component. Pilotage charges refer to the charges paid for the pilot who will guide the ships through the channel, especially the dredged part. "We have not yet decided on the final pilotage charges. Globally they keep fluctuating and are affected by various factors like fuel charges,' says Raghupathy. The calculation of pilotage charges will be done on the basis of the money saved by a ship by using the canal. This money will be saved in terms of fuel costs as well as charter costs, the latter a result of saving on time. "We have decided that we would charge 50 per cent of the money saved as pilotage charges,' Raghupathy says.
A loss-making proposition
Several experts have, however, raised questions about the economic aspects of the project. K S Ramakrishnan, former deputy chairperson of the Chennai Port Trust, made some telling points in a newspaper article. "The basic justification advanced in favour of sscp is that it will reduce the distance between Kolkata and Tuticorin by 340 nautical miles and between Chennai and Tuticorin by 434 nautical miles, thereby saving, for the ships plying between these places, both fuel cost and time involved in sailing the additional distance