Silent flows the river

Older than the Ganga, and one of the last in the Indian Peninsula to flow free, the Aghanashini, is like a river from a different age. Draining the Western Ghats of northern Karnataka, the Aghanashini’s short course is dotted with forests and the river carries nutrients from these forests to the sea, ending at a relatively undisturbed estuary called Tadadi, near Gokarna. The estuary is unique in Karnataka.

Home to double the number of fish species, and consequently double the number of fishermen, than other surrounding rivers, the Aghanashini estuary is an icon of the ability of a river to support life. However, even as locals call for the area to be declared a biodiversity heritage site, plans are afoot to turn the estuary into an all-weather greenfield port, intended to serve the coal and iron ore export industry.

Like many of its west-flowing counterparts, the Aghanashini is a rain-fed river. The influx of the monsoon, particularly of the variety that bombards the Karnataka coast, changes the chemical composition of the river. The easiest way to realise this change is to test the water for salinity. A natural rain-fed river is less salty or saline during monsoon months, because of the abundant freshwater, but grows increasingly saline in the dry season. The Aghanashini peaks in salinity in April-May, and this salinity drastically falls away with the start of the monsoon. This salinity flux has a number of benefits.

Ocean’s blood vessels
Rivers are like the ocean’s blood vessels, pulling nutrients from distant terrestrial organs during the monsoon and pushing marine nutrients landwards during the dry season.

Several studies from British Columbia, Canada found that many of the forests on Canada’s west coast owe their existence to marine nutrients that were brought upriver by migrating salmon.

Indian fish also perform these herculean uphill swims. The most famous of our river-runners is the hilsa. Once found all along the west coast of India, these fish were like little shots of nutrients, packed with calcium and nitrogen that could be picked up by hunters like otters, and distributed on land. Fishermen were also a crucial part of this nutrient transfer. Thanks to their trade networks, marine nutrients could wind up as far inland as Bengaluru or Delhi.

The most critical piece in this marine nutrient web is the fish that forms the link between sea and land. Marine fish can only swim upriver when their salinity increases. Scientists from the Centre for Ecological Sciences at the Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru, found that rivers that were dammed did not show annual salinity fluxes. River Sharavathi, a neighbour of the Aghanashini, had regular releases of freshwater from its dams through the year. As a result, it could never get very saline. Marine fish found it very difficult to adjust to the freshwater causing fish, like the hilsa, to disappear from this river and its estuary. This is the story of river after river on India’s west coast, but so far, the Aghanashini has not fallen prey to this fate.

But the tide is about to turn for the Aghanashini estuary. Currently, a mix of mangrove forest, which harbours over 120 species of birds and 90 species of fish and home to twenty fishing villages, which depend on its production of over twenty thousand tonnes per year of shellfish, this estuary is set to be dredged. Only shallow waters, with a lot of light, can support so much marine biodiversity, but shallow waters will not allow the docking of iron-ore transporting barges. Dredging is not a permanent solution in an estuary. A river like the Aghanashini carries with it evidence of its passage across land. The silt that feeds the estuary will not stop flowing in after a single dredge, so once such an activity is undertaken, it becomes a continuous process of maintaining the artificially deepened channel.

For a picture of what the Aghnashini river estuary could look like after being turned into a port, one need only look at the Kochi Harbour, or the nearby Redi Port. Slick with oil from hundreds of vessels, the Indo-pacific humpback dolphins dodge plastic bags and other garbage to find their fish in Kochi. The effects of improper design at Redi has had more serious impacts. Here, trucks dump mined ore off the jetty into an open ship container that is waiting on a mini cargo-ship nearly twenty feet below the jetty. Since the dumping is direct, i.e. without a pipe or channel between the truck and the ship, any passing gust of wind tosses quite a significant percentage of the ore into the water. The results are visible nearly 10 km away. Fishing villages to the north of Redi have begun shutting shop.

There are no more fish, they say, not after the water became contaminated with the ore and heavy metals. Many are now turning to employment in the very industry that eliminated their livelihood – they are buying mining trucks.

Erasing beaches
The organisation PondyCAN has documented another serious impact of ports – coastal erosion. Their work in Pondicherry, since the 1970s, linked the disappearance of the beach in Pondicherry town to its port. Silt deposition by rivers, along with annual sea currents along the coast naturally shift sands in order to feed and maintain beaches. Breakwaters and gyres built for ports interrupt these currents and deposition patterns, causing surrounding beaches to erode. Located next to the tourist and pilgrimage hub of Gokarna, a port at the Aghanashini estuary could spell the end of the Om Beach, as well as all other coastal activities.

In 2012, the Ministry of Shipping announced that building a port at Tadadi in the Aghanashini estuary was not feasible for economic reasons. They cited a lack of connecting infrastructure, such as roads and railways that would link the port to the source of coal and iron-ore that it sought to transport. Developing a port in that location would mean drastically modifying transport systems in the entire region. However, the Karnataka Government decided to go ahead with the proposal using a public-private-partnership model.

The number of people who will be affected by this proposal, however are far more than those at the river mouth. Without migrating marine fish, how will essential nutrients reach the forests of Uttara Kannada, and feed hungry mouths  along the way? No concrete plan for alternatives to the tourism economy built around the beaches of Gokarna is being discussed. The unspoken assumption appears to be that everyone seeking alternatives ought to be employed in the port’s activities. For technically ‘unskilled’ fishermen and coastal people, employment opportunities in a port a limited.

Understandably, there is significant resistance to the port by local panchayats. Like most proposed development projects, the environmental impact assessment and mitigation plan for this port have been criticised as being too simplistic to produce results.

The Ministry of Shipping lists 12 major ports and 187 minor ports in India as of 2004-2005. A study by the Dakshin Foundation raised that number to 213
notified minor ports in 2010. This brings up the question of the need to convert yet another estuary into a port in Karnataka. Scientists suggest that money might be better spent strengthening existing ports and hinterland infrastructure. Such a suggestion might be taken seriously if we can see value in what the Aghanashini is currently providing for thousands of people. For a river that has helped us survive for millenia, the time has come to return the favour.