Orissa sees the Ridleys again

Kirtiman Awasthi, Express Buzz 23 May 09;

When Olive Ridley turtles missed their annual nesting trip to the Orissa coast last year, conservationists blamed the upcoming port at Dhamra. Then the turtles came back and the debate began, say Kirtiman Awasthi, Ashutosh Mishra and Ravleen Kaur.

On March 23, Greenpeace Inter­national issued full-page advertisements in the inter­national press to draw attention to the Olive Ridleys, which come annually to the beaches of Orissa’s Gahirmatha to nest.

The advertisement drew on the hype around the cheap car Nano by Tata, the company building the Dhamra port along with the L&T group, to raise alarm about the impact of an upcoming port on the endangered turtles.

The port at Dhamra is less than five km from the Bhitarkanika National Park; it is 15 km from the Gahirmatha Marine Sanctuary. The beaches are one of the world’s largest nesting sites for the turtles. The turtles didn’t nest there last year; this year’s nesting season—from December to March—hadn’t seen any turtles. March 24 brought a surprise.

Unaware of the advertisement—and the talk of construction work driving the turtles away from the beaches where they breed—thousands of olive-coloured, heart-shaped shells emerged from the waters off the Gahirmatha coast. They were seen floating in the inshore waters around sunset.

This cycle continued from March 24-30, and the Dhamra Port Company Ltd said the event vindicated their stand that the port does not pose any threat to the turtles. The company argued there were occasions earlier when the turtles did not visit the Orissa coast. Mass nesting did not happen in the early 1980s and the late 1990s. “The port construction started in late 2007,” a company spokesperson said.

So, why didn’t the turtles come to the beach in certain years? The answers are not known; there are only anecdotes. People in the Kendrapara district, under which the beach lies, say missile tests on the Wheeler island, close to the Gahirmatha sanctuary, and fishing ports could be the reasons. But there are no scientific studies to back these conjectures. The state government, port authorities and conservationists—local and international—who claim the port disturbs the turtles have not carried out any study so far on the port’s possible impact on turtles. The port company had invited activists for talks to allay the imp­act of the port on the turtles, if any, but the green groups are not ready to meet till the company stops construction.

With talks in limbo, the port is now half complete. Violations in the clearances given to the port have not been debated publicly because of the impasse on the impact on the turtles. Take the example of the environ­mental impact assessment (EIA) report. This raises interesting questions even about other port projects.

The Dhamra Port Company claimed to have all the approvals before starting the port’s construction in 2007. A Pune-based consultant wrote the EIA report for the Dhamra port in 1997, when it was to be built by Internal Sea Port. Then, the port was to come up on Kanika island off the coast, near the mouth of river Dhamra. In 2004, the state government moved the location of the port to the mainland, close to the Gahirmatha sanctuary.

The new proposal envisaged a bigger port than previously planned—cargo handling capacity increased to 83 million tonnes per year compared to the 25 million tonnes per year proposed earlier. The EIA notification, under which the port was cleared, does not allow such expansion.

“The Orissa government did not get new studies done because it found the new site most suitable for a deep sea port. Besides, Dhamra is the expansion of an old project, so the question of a new EIA does not arise,” said A K Panda, the state’s deputy secretary of port development. There is a distinct advantage in labelling a project an expansion of an old one: it goes for clearance to the Union surface transport ministry, which is charged with developing infrastructure like ports. A new project, however, must get the nod from the Union environment ministry, responsible for safeguarding the environment.

A 2006 report, by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), on the scoping mission of the Dhamra port project contradicts Panda. It said: “The new port significantly dwarfs the old port in terms of size and potential environmental impacts. In our view the port is really not an expansion of an old port, the two are not even adjacent.” It also said the port would see a growth in industry in the area. “If the port becomes a net importer of raw materials, industries would want to be as close to the port as possible. While the port itself might be committed to environmental action, the secondary industries may not be so.”

These concerns do not find a mention in the EIA, which addresses the turtles in two of the 160 pages. The EIA says the port site is not the nesting ground for turtles and hence won’t affect them in any way. IUCN disagrees: “Turtle hatchlings are attracted to bright lights, and it is possible the… hatchlings will be misguided and head inland towards the port rather than offshore.”

There is little mention of possible impact of erosion or dredging on turtles in the EIA. IUCN asked for a comprehensive environmental management plan. So the company commissioned in 2008 a study to the National Institute of Oceanography in Goa to find out if dredging would affect nesting beaches. The study would be complete in May 2009; initial findings suggest erosion and accretion of the beaches is a natural process and an annual cyclical phenomenon and cannot be attributed to dredging at the port site.

IUCN officials suggested safeguard measures. Nicolas J Pilcher, co-chair of IUCN’s Marine Turtle Specialist Group, said mitigation measures work well and the company had taken a proactive stand in this regard. He added IUCN brought the world’s best science to the table, which would benefit the project. But conservationists do not buy the explanation because the mitigation measures are limited only to the Dhamra port site.

“There have been no impact studies on ancillary and downstream projects—ship building yard, steel plant, fertilizer plant—as a result of port,” said a report by Sudarshan Rodrigues and Aarti Shreedhar of ATREE.

The Orissa state government is planning 11 ports, including Dhamra. The state wants to be on par with other maritime states and has proposed a single-window agency for development of ports and inland waterways. At this point, the importance of regulations and safeguards cannot be overstated.