Count the ecological costs of national waterways project in India!

The National Waterways project should consider all ecological impacts and in an integrated manner along with all surface transport activities it has to engage in, and accordingly decide future courses of action.

The National Waterways project is being pursued citing multiple advantages to humans, mostly the city dwellers. Agencies including the World Bank consider it to be a cheap and green method of transporting goods.  However, if we consider the fact that rivers are ecological entities and that biodiversity dependent on them are at severe stress, the way to look at the impacts of the Waterways project would be completely different. 

Estimates put it that freight movement by waterways costs almost half than roadways. 

Comparing that with railways however, the difference is not much. While it takes approximately 2.28 rupees per tonne for a kilometre of road transport on highways, the railways transport costs about 1.41 rupees and that via waterways comes to about 1.19 rupees. The other advantage claimed is about fuel efficiency. While one litre of fuel can move 24 tonnes by roadways, it can move 85 tonnes by railways and 105 tonnes by the waterways. The fuel, in all these cases is diesel, a big pollutant.

A study by the Inland Waterways Authority of India (IWAI)has claimed that Green House Gas (GHG) emissions from transport of goods in waterways is almost half compared to that in roadways. The authority also claims this to be the safest mode of transporting large quantities of chemicals and toxic materials with least danger to the surroundings. The IWAI further claims that it creates less noise pollution and air pollution and helps cities from bearing air and noise pollutions that emanate from surface transport.

The waterways are being promoted to add to the existing extensive road and railway cargo transport network, and it is estimated that from the current traffic of about 5 million tonnes moving in National Waterways, the project (Integrated National Waterways Grid Connectivity) is estimated to add about 159 million tonnes by the commencement year 2022, if all facilities recommended in the studies are provided. This addition is the divertible traffic. 

There is however no integrated study that would suggest us if the transport by railways and roadways will give way to that by waterways by then, or it will be further addition.

Documents justifying the waterways project suggest that other means of freight transport are saturating. Reality shows otherwise as the push for road and rail projects are increasing by the day. What is important for us to know from an environmental perspective is the fact that the waterways would not be standalone projects and they will require many constructions including roadways on surface as well. Studies by IWAI confirm that each terminal for this project is essentially required to have at least two‐lane road connectivity to the nearest National Highway or State Highway to serve the traffic identified. Current standards require at least 20 meter width of space for laying two lane road of 7 meter each carriage way with paved shoulders and side drainage etc. The environmental impact of this needs to be assessed as well.

Impact on rivers

Indian rivers are highly polluted and stressed, most of them are drying up fast due to faulty development measures and impact of climate change. For the waterways to be successful, we need continuously flowing healthy rivers.  Then comes the case of pollution by the vessels that will be plying on these waterways. Surprisingly, not much has been said about the water pollution and disturbances to riverine species, livelihood of fisher folk and farmers in any of the government reports that are available in the public domain. 

According to the IWAI, the country has about 14,500 km of navigable waterways which comprise of rivers, canals, backwaters, creeks, etc. Currently, only about  55 million tonnes of cargo is being moved annually by Inland Water Transport (IWT) that operates in a few stretches in the Ganga-Bhagirathi-Hooghly rivers, the Brahmaputra, the Barak river, the rivers in Goa, the backwaters in Kerala, inland waters in Mumbai and the deltaic regions of the Godavari – Krishna rivers. Only 0.5 percent of the country’s freight moves via waterways while it’s 7 percent in Europe, 8.3 percent in USA and 8.7 percent in China.

Of all this, most of work seems to have happened so far in the National Waterway No. 1 of 1620 kilometres that covers the Ganga-Bhagirathi-Hooghly river system between Haldia (Sagar) and Allahabad. A major activity in this so far has been to maintain a navigable depth for large cargo vehicles to move. The IWAI informs that during 2013-14, it had been maintaining a Least Available Depth (LAD) of 3.0 meters between Haldia (Sagar) & Farakka (560 km), 2.5 meters in Farakka – Barh (400 km), 2.0 meters in Barh – Ghazipur (290 km) and 1.2 to 1.5 meters in Chunar – Allahabad sector (370 km).  

Ganga is already facing multiple challenges to maintain its water and siltation has emerged as a mega problem for the basin. Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar had in June this year said that the National Waterways 1 (NW 1) will not succeed unless the siltation problem is tackled. Speaking at the first East India climate change conclave in Patna, he had raised his concern over how a cargo vessel of IWAI had been stuck in the river at Ramrekha Ghat as because the river was only 1.10 meter deep continuously for about six months.  Dredging is seen as a solution by IWAI as well as agencies involved with it. However, as Nitish Kumar rightly pointed out in the same conclave, dredging is no solution as the river needs continuous flow and not just some water at a particular area if it had to remain clean. 

Dredging has environmental issues

According to the World Bank, “Ganga is a seasonal river that swells with the monsoon rains and recedes in the dry winters. Typically, making such a river navigable would call for large scale dredging of the riverbed to attain the depth needed by larger boats, especially for large barges carrying up to 2,000 tonnes of cargo. In the Ganga’s case, special care has been taken to accommodate such vessels while keeping the need for dredging to the minimum”.

In fact, dredging has many other environmental hazards as it will involve heavy machineries to operate in the river constantly. The noise as well as vibrations will disturb the riverine flora and fauna.  Fisher folk will be affected and there will be other forms of environmental challenges and conflicts. Dredging at one place may affect water retention status in other stretches of the river affecting irrigation and other uses, thereby leading to public discontent and conflicts.

Latest studies confirm that climate change is inducing more flood that will add to siltation load, and more water scarcity in lean periods. The IWAI is considering increase in depth at many stretches with further dredging. The waterways therefore is destined to see continuous construction activities and hence pollution and other disturbances to riverine ecosystems.

Transport of coal and toxic materials

As can be seen from data shared by the IWAI, the waterways will be used mostly to transport coal and other toxic materials. Trial runs under the NW 1 have been completed for this as this waterways is all set to be modernised with a World Bank loan of $ 375 million meant for capacity augmentation to help put in place the infrastructure and services needed to ensure that NW 1 emerges as an efficient transport artery in this important economic region. 

The World Bank loan is for modernisation of infrastructure in a stretch of 1,360 kilometres inlands to ferry cargo from the eastern seaport of Haldia to Varanasi, and it also talks about taking some measures to reduce damages to ecology, especially because this waterway passes through two aquatic wildlife sanctuaries that fall along this stretch of the river — the Kashi Turtle Sanctuary at Varanasi and the Vikramshila Dolphin Sanctuary at Bhagalpur. However, considering the record of maintaining cleanliness of rivers in India, there are several doubts about this claim. Especially, there are lot of deficiencies that exist in the country with regard to monitoring pollution and other destructions done to ecosystems. 

Recently, the Odisha government did not give nod for the sea plane project, proposed by the Centre in Chilika lake considering the negative impacts it will have on the wildlife there.

Constant dredging and regular cargo movement of thousands of tonnes will be much more dangerous than that. It needs also be mentioned here that the waterways is to be linked to the cargo movements in the Bay of Bengal. Our oceans are heavily polluted now and there have been several instances of toxic spills and other pollutants from heavy cargo movement. The Sunderban, a globally significant and very sensitive ecosystem, is already heavily stressed and vulnerable to such activities and recent cases of oil spills from freight movements along these mangroves have outraged international communities.

The National Waterways project should therefore consider all ecological impacts seriously and in an integrated manner along with all surface transport activities it has to engage in, and accordingly decide future courses of action. The environmental cost of the project might be too high for the rivers and dependent ecosystems and communities to bear.

This article was first published in Urban Update