TEXTILES.ORG
A district irrigation department in West Bengal, India has initiated a geotextile tube project on an experimental basis in an effort to check coastline erosion.
A 1-km test section on the Bay of Bengal coastline from Shankarpur to Jalda in the district of East Midnapore was installed this spring. The project, implemented to stop the denudation of the coastline embankment, is the first of its kind in the country.
Subhas Naskar, the state’s irrigation minister, inaugurated the project at Shankarpur in April. He said: “When repeated appeals to the Centre to initialize erosion control in the state failed, state irrigation department moved a step forward and decided to start this project.”
The East Midnapore district’s irrigation department plans to eventually install geotextile tubes to stop erosion along a 10-km stretch of coastline from Shankarpur to Chandpur.
In the first phase of the project, work commenced in April along the 1-km experimental section from Shankarpur to Jalda. If successful, subsequent phases of the project will be undertaken.
Similar methods of preventing shoreline erosion could also be adopted at West Mayapur and Agradwip, depending on the success of the geotube project in Sankarpur, added Naskar.
Contributors from IIT Madras, CWPRS Pune, National Institute of Oceanography, Goa, School of Oceanography, Jadavpur University conducted a survey of the coastline in the area to design the project and recommended utilization of geotube technology to halt erosion.