Govt unlikely to meet Aug 31 deadline on draft CZMP

ABDUL WAHAB KHAN | NT

Panaji

Although the environment department has pulled out all the stops to finalise the draft coastal zone management plan by the NGT deadline of August 31, it is unlikely that the department would achieve the feat owing to the onerous ‘ground-truthing’ work on objections received against the draft plan.

The Goa Coastal Zone Management Authority received 7509 suggestions and objections – 3493 in North Goa and 4016 in South Goa – during the first public hearing held in March this year. In addition, more than 1000 objections were received during the second public hearing held on July 8. The data compiling exercise relating to the 7509 objections and suggestions to the draft CZMP has been complete. However, compilation and village-wise segregation of objections that were received till July 15 are still underway.

The data compiled so far showed objections to wrong/non-depiction of khazan lands, sluice gates, bunds, fishing zones, fish breeding areas, fishing wards, fishing village boundaries, high-tide lines, sand dunes, mangroves/buffer for mangroves and heritage sites.

But it does not look likely that work on the draft CZMP will be completed in accordance with the NGT deadline because the ‘ground-truthing’ exercise will be taken up village-wise, for which timeline has not been fixed.

And even if the ground verification is conducted the authority will have to request the Chennai-based National Centre for Sustainable Coastal Management for updates in coastal maps wherever required and put the same in public domain. Only then the authority can forward the draft plan to the central government for approval.

The authority is waiting for the data under compilation to set in motion the ground-truthing work. It is still not known as how much time will the compilation take for completion. 

As per approved action plan, the objections and suggestions relating to khazan lands, sluice gates and bunds will be forwarded to the water resources department for its comments and for carrying out ground-truthing work, wherever required.

The suggestions and objections relating to fishing activities will be forwarded to the fisheries department.

The town and country planning and archives and archaeology departments will be entrusted with examining and doing ground-truthing on heritage sites. To address the objections relating to wrong mapping of mangrove, the authority has decided to constitute a four-member expert committee, comprising Dr Simon D’Souza, Dr N P S Varde, Dr Prabhakar Shirodkar and Dr Vinod Dhargalkar, to carry out ground-truthing and submit its comments.

Expert members, engineers and surveyors of the GCZMA will check ground realities vis-à-vis the objections to wrong and non-depiction of HTL and sand dunes.  

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