Representative image.
(Rajtilak Naik/TOI, BCCL)
The Odisha government has asked its Water Resources Department to prepare an action plan for strengthening the saline and flood embankments on the coastline in one month.
Chief Secretary S.C. Mahapatra has asked the department to identify the vulnerable locations and tracks wherever tidal ingress onto the land is a probability, an official said on Wednesday. He also asked to identify ‘at risk’ areas where a permanent evacuation would be the only plausible solution.
Water Resources Secretary Anu Garg said: “The state is the sixth most cyclone-prone area of the world. With around 17% of the state lying along the coastline (480km), Odisha faces around 35% of cyclonic storms and tidal surges.”
In the last ten years, Odisha faced seven very severe to extremely severe cyclones. The coastal belt witnessed a tidal surge of 3.5m to 4.5m at the time of cyclones, causing large scale saline inundation. In the context of increasing frequency and intensity of the cyclones, the official said it is necessary to strengthen the embankments further.
The engineers of the Water Resource Department have been asked to talk with people who live close to the sea and have their landed property on the coastline to convince them about the necessity as well as the utility of strengthening the saline/flood embankments. He said that raising the height of the embankments would save them from tidal surges and inundation in the future.
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The above article has been published from a wire source with minimal modifications to the headline and text.
