VIJAYAWADA: The ambitious inland waterway from Kakinanda to Puducherry is going to take quite some time in the wake of slow progress of the state government in commissioning of survey for the land that is required for the project.
Though hydrographic study of the project has been completed, the survey relating to how much land is needed and where, is yet to begin.
“Once the land is acquired and handed over to the Inland Waterways Authority, it could ground the work. We cannot hazard a guess as to when this happens,” sources in the Inland Waterways Authority of India (IWAI) said.
The Centre, with an intent to develop waterways to make transportation cost effective, declared Kakinada Pudhcerry stretch of canals National Waterway in November, 2008. The total length of the project is 1,078 km.
Most of the waterway comprises fresh water navigation canal,running parallel to the Coromandel coast from Kakinada in East Godavari to Villupuram district in TN. The canal connects most of the natural backwaters along the coast in between Pedaganjam of Praksam district to the port of Chennai.
The Kakinada-Puducherry stretch of canals comprises Kakinada canal (50 km), Eluru Canal (139 km), Commamuru canal (113), North Buckingham canal (446 km), Bhadrachalam- Rajahmundry stretch of River Godavari (171 km), Wazirabad-Vijayawada stretch of Krishna river ( 157 km) was declared national waterway-4.
The IWAI on Jan 1, 2015 proposed to develop NW4 as Class III waterways for the movement of vessels upto 1,000 tonne capacity. As per IWAI standards, Class III waterway requires 40 m horizontal clearance, 7 m vertical, 2.2. m draft and 700 m curvature.
The IWAI completed the hydrographic survey for Eluru canal, Commamuru Canal, North Buckingham Canal and Krishna-Godavari River in June this year. Further, the IWAI requested the state government to conduct delineation survey work for the canals.
The state government, in turn, called tenders for the survey with an amount of `3.05 crore in August, 2015 for all canals from Kakinada to Pulicat Lake in Nellore district.
The scope of the survey comprises review and demarcation of available government land, preparation of schedules for acquisition of private land required and enumeration of encroachments and assessment of all damages in private and public lands.
“The Centre has asked the state government to hand over whatever land it has and then go ahead for acquisition of the remaining land after mapping it,” the source said.