Kendrapara, July 22: The country’s first geo-tube sea wall project under World Bank-funded Integrated Coastal Zone Management Programme in Kendrapara district may be further delayed.

Experts have opted for a wide-ranging scientific study of the erosion-hit shoreline along the Pentha coast in Rajnagar tehsil.

In the run up to the much-awaited sea wall project to arrest sea erosion, a three-member team of oceanography experts from Indian Institute of Technology, Chennai, today made an on-the-spot inspection of the vulnerable shoreline.

“The experts would make a comprehensive scientific study of the erosion- prone coast. The installation of the geo-tube sea wall to save a cluster of highly threatened hamlets would be delayed as the project would get under way only on the basis of the experts’ reports,” said executive engineer of saline embankment division Jugal Kishore Tripathy.

“The three oceanographic experts would study, among other things, the beach profile, moisture content of the sand particles, morphology of the eroded beach, intensity, frequency and velocity of the waves,” said Tripathy.

Last April, a World Bank team, in charge of implementation of the coastal zone management programme, had made an on-the-spot inspection of the endangered embankment at Pentha.

Of the 480km coastline in the state, 39.3km is undergoing various degrees of sea erosion. The Pentha coast, set for a geo synthetic tube refurbishment, comes under the high erosion zone, said officials.

The executive engineer said: “The ministry of environment and forest (MoEF), on the basis of onscreen digitisation of coastline and satellite imagery study, has pointed out that over one-third of the state’s shoreline is exposed to varying degrees of sea erosion. Of it, 8.2 per cent is severely hit by erosion. That includes the Pentha coast.”

The technical and scientific study of the Dhamra-Paradip shoreline by experts deputed by IIT Chennai would continue for about a year.

The team would give its seal of approval on the technical design, the location and length of the geo-tube embankment after which the installation work would commence.

Hopefully, the installation of geo synthetic tube sea wall would begin around mid-2012, said officials.

“Till the project gets under way, temporary measures like putting up timber stumps, bamboo poles and sand-filled bags would be put in place to tame the advancing sea. However, temporary measures like this in the past have failed to arrest the rampaging sea,” Tripathy said.

According to the technical plan, geo-tubes, made of high grade rexin and filled with sand, would be put in place at the erosion-hit Pentha embankment in Rajnagar tehsil. The sand-filled rexin bags would act as a protective barrier against tidal waves. It would absorb the tidal ingress, salinity content and sodium chloride content in sea-water and would stop the erosion of the embankment, said technical experts in the saline embankment division.