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| Sunday, 23 January 2005 |
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Least affected by tsunami by Hiran H.Senewiratne The coastal line stability program to control sea erosion started five years ago in highly vulnerable coastal areas, has suffered the least damage from the Tsunami disaster, its Project Director Nissanka Perera said.
Under this project it will pump sand to shore from the deep sea through a ship to extend the land area by 50 m towards the sea. This will protect the shore from sea erosion especially along the Southern coastal sea belt, Perera said. He said that this program is known as the Coastal Line Stabilisation program funded by the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and the government of Netherlands.The total cost for this project is around US $ 24 million. The main objective of this project is to protect the 52 km long coastal stretch in the country, which is highly vulnerable to sea erosion.The areas under this project are Negombo to Matara, which have been identified as most vulnerable to the sea erosion in the country. The project has been undertaken by a Danish contractor M.T Hojgarrd,Perera said.This is expected to be completed by the middle of this year. At present Wennappuwa, Colombo North,Wadduwa and Paiyagala have been completed and areas including Waskaduwa, Pothupitiya Nagashandiya upto Beruwala will be completed soon. Perera said that Hikkaduwa and Beruwala design bases were changed due to the Tsunami tidal wave but were not damaged. "Most of our sites were not damaged during the Tsunami disaster," he emphasised. According to Perera this project is part of the Coastal Environment Resource Management (CERM) master plan.The plan includes coastal development projects such as coastal environment resource management project , fishery harbour project and sea-water desalination project. The total cost of the CERM project will be around US $ 80 million.The ADB's contribution is US$ 40 million, US $ 15 million from the Netherlands and balance from the Sri Lankan government. The CERM project is handled by the Ministry of Fisheries. |
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