Flooded Dangmal village near Bhitarkanika wildlife sanctuary

Kendrapara, June 25: Agricultural land in villages near the Bhitarkanika National Sanctuary has been inundated by tidal waves that have spilled over embankments.

The two villages that have been badly affected are Dangmal and Iswapur.

“Roughly 20km of the embankment lies within the sanctuary. The water resources department wants to build a stonewall as barrier. But the problem is that a permanent construction of this nature is not allowed within the sanctuary limits without permission from competent authorities,” said executive engineer, saline embankment division, Jugal Kishore Tripathy.

Such permanent construction might hurt estuarine crocodiles, said divisional forest officer Manoj Kumar Mahapatra. “This area falls under the coastal regulation zone, and so an embankment cannot be built without the approval of competent authorities,” said Mahapatra.

Engineers have been asked to undertake repair and maintenance of weak embankments and sluice gates to stop such inundation in future, said Kendrapara sub-collector Pratap Chandra Mishra.

“The embankments are being plugged with sand bags. We have identified some more vulnerable points and are taking urgent steps to repair them,” said Tripathy.

But residents alleged that the entire 32-km embankment built in the 1970s had become weak. “The embankment that was meant to protect the coastal villages in Rajnagar is an a bad shape. Funds that had been sanctioned for its repair after the 1999 super cyclone have largely been misused. As a result, the coastal villages remain vulnerable,” alleged Jagabandhu Nayak, former chairman of the Rajnagar panchayat samity.

“The sluice gates erected at strategic embankments points are left wide open and has led tidal waves spilling into settlements,” alleged Dangmal gram panchayat sarpanch Kantilata Behera.

The executive engineer of the saline embankment division, Tripathy, said that the matter had been taken up with the Integrated Coastal Zone Management Programme authorities.

“We have asked for permission to rebuild the embankment. Plans are afoot either to put in place geo-synthetic tubes or a coir structure to plug the tidal waves as has been successfully done at the Kaziranga National Park in Assam,” Tripathy said.