National Waterway-5 fast tracked

Bhubaneswar: The National Waterway-5 has been put on fast track with Chief Secretary Aditya Prasad Padhi and Chairman Inland Waterways Authority of India (IWAI) Nutan Guha Biswas jointly reviewing the progress and resolving issues that cropped up during field-level execution of the project.
The project proponent placed the updates for discussion at meeting at the secretariat here on Tuesday.
The Chief Secretary asked the Collectors of the districts concerned to undertake a survey of the villages along the river banks and identify points that are generally used by the people for crossing the river. Chairman IWAI assured all possible assistance for setting up ghats at those points for carrying forward the river dredging work.
Issues related to dredging of the river course, dumping of dredged materials, transportation of the dredged materials, repair and maintenance of the embankment roads, protection of river banks, preparation of tender documents redesigning and development of the existing bridges on the waterway were discussed and resolved in the meeting.
It was decided to carry forward 1st phase of the project from Dhamara/Paradeep to Pankapala through Mangalagadi. The distance from Dhamara to Mangalagadi is around 28 km and that from Paradeep Port to Mangalagadi is around 67 km. The distance from Mangalagadi to Pankapala is around 106 km. There are 12 Railway, NHAI, and PWD bridges on this stretch and these would be redesigned and customized for the waterway. The works on this stretch will be carried out in close cooperation between State and Central agencies. A SPV, involving Government of Odisha, Paradeep Port Trust and Dhamara Port Trust, has been formed for the purpose. According to preliminary estimates, Rs.1243 cr will be invested in the project in the coming four years.
Available data show, the proposed waterway consists of rivers like Bramhani, Kharsua, Kani, Dhamara, Mantei, Mahanadi delta, and East Coast Canal spread over the states of Odisha and West Bengal. It stretches over 588 km, out of which 492 km are in Odisha and the rest 91 km in West Bengal. The waterway has been designed to provide connectivity between Paradeep Dhamara port, Kalinganagar Industrial cluster and Mahanadi Coalfields Limited.
Development Commissioner R Balakrishnan, Principal Secretary Commerce & Transport Sanjaya Rastogi, Principal Secretary Water Resources Pradeep Kumar Jena, Principal Secretary Revenue and Disaster Management Dr Chanda Sekhar Kumar, Energy Secretary Hemant Kumar Sharma, Special Secretary Commerce & Transport Manoj Kumar Mishra along with senior officers from NHAI, Railways, Port Trusts, IWAI and Kendrapada Collector were present.