Puri today is perhaps the only place in the world where an international airport is being planned near the coast. That is too in the vicinity of another international airport, Bhubaneswar, which is only 15 minutes’ flying time.
The recent announcement by the State Government in regard to the Airport Authority of India’s green signal for the airport near Puri came with a note that it fulfilled all the required criteria. The pantomime of this dream airport started when Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik in a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi on January 1 this year had sought establishment of an international airport named after Lord Jagannath.
Union Minister from Odisha Dharmendra Pradhan too joined the chorus and a team was promptly sent to Puri for identifying a location. It was all a game of one-upmanship, each trying to take the credit. In rocket speed, an area of 1,500 acres on the western outskirts of Puri at Girala mouza was identified and the “experts” were quick in remarking that the airport would have no problem with the wind speed and direction.
Initially, the airport would have a single runway; however, a parallel runway in future would entail another 2,300 acres. On July 5, Commerce and Transport Minister Padmanabha Behera said the airport could be ready for operations by 2022-23. Pipe dreams all. The so-called experts have absolutely no knowledge at all about setting up airports in coastal areas. Puri perhaps today is the only place in the world where an international airport is being planned near the coast.
A recent study by scientists at the Newcastle University shows that hundreds of coastal airports are at risk of severe flooding with rising sea levels triggered by global warming. The study “Global Analysis of Sea Level Rise Risk to Airports” was conducted by the university's Professor Richard Dawson and Aaron Yesudian of the university’s School of Engineering.
It studied 14,000 airports worldwide and gave a report that more than 260 airports around the globe are currently at risk of coastal flooding, and dozens could be below mean sea level by the turn of the century. The study shows that a temperature rise of 2 degrees Celsius, which is consistent with the Paris Agreement, will eventually lead to hundreds of coastal airports going below mean sea level and hundreds more at risk of severe flooding. Incidentally, airports in Asia and the Pacific topped the list. “These coastal airports are disproportionately important to the global airline network; and by 2100 between 10 and 20percent of all routes will be at risk of disruption,” the report said. Depending on the amount of global warming in the coming decades, as many as 572 airports could be at risk by 2100.
The last decade was the hottest ever recorded on earth and the Arctic experienced its second-warmest year last year. Sea level rise can also make the impacts of extreme weather worse by pushing deadly and destructive cyclonic storms inland, something we have seen in the Bay of Bengal in recent times. The International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO), a specialised United Nations agency which sets the principles and techniques of international air navigation, planning and development of international air transport too, has issued an advisory to 75 existing coastal airports to shift inland. There have been a multitude of damage and disruption in coastal airports in recent years due to cyclonic storms. In the global list of airports at highest risk, East and Southeast Asia and the Pacific dominate.
Bangkok's Suvarnabhumi Airport topped the list. In Japan, the Kansai International Airport was wrecked by Typhoon Jebi in 2018. Major airports in storm-vulnerable regions such as Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan, the Philippines, Thailand and India have repeatedly suffered shutdowns and damage due to typhoons.
Hurricane Sandy had resulted in the closure of all three New York area airports. Cyclone Amphan left the Kolkata airport flooded. Cyclone Tauktae too resulted in the closure of the Mumbai airport. Even airports of Surat, Vadodra and Ahmadabad were badly affected. This incident illustrated the growing power extreme weather events can have on airports situated close to the sea. Cyclone Fani damaged the Bhubaneswar airport extensively, resulting in its closure for five days although it was a good 50 km inland. Imagine what would have happened to an airport on the coast.
Architect Aloukika Mohanty is of the opinion that airports are high-roofed hollow structures with hangars, concourses, terminals, towers, etc. The vulnerability of such structures during storms, winds and rain is very high.
She gives the example of the Malatipatpur bus-stand on the outskirts of Puri, the roof of which was completely blown off during Cyclone Fani. Such an ill-planned structure should have never been approved in the vulnerable zone. Noted environmentalist Biswajit Mohanty has stressed the impact of such coastal airports on the delicate coastal biodiversity. Besides air pollution and increased levels of CO2, NO2 and sulphur oxide, there will be habitat degradation with the replacement of vegetation and contamination of grasslands. The airport will be in the direct fly path of the migratory birds which come to the Chilka lake.
The sheer number of trees that will have to be felled will harm the already-stressed coastal ecosystem.According to activist Hector Mishra, who has spearheaded many issues of Puri, the airport is just a dream which is being dished out. He is highly skeptical about the Minister’s claim that the airport would be operative by 2023.
According to him, an international airport takes eight to 10 years to be completed; the new airports at Mumbai and Delhi are examples. The State Government has not even been able to upgrade the existing airstrips at Utkela, Jeypore and Gopalpur, leave alone making any new airstrips. A very high-placed meteorological expert, under conditions of anonymity, is of the opinion that an airport in such a cyclone-prone area will be a disaster. He also admitted that no expert opinion was taken from weather experts before such a foolhardy project was announced.
The adverse impacts caused by tropical cyclones due to climate change have become increasingly important in recent years. In order to assess tropical cyclone risk, direct economic damage is frequently modelled based on hazard intensity, asset exposure, and vulnerability.
The Government should immediately stop this pie-in-the-sky unrealistic project and not waste scarce public money. We have seen what happened during the POSCO imbroglio; over 55 thousand trees were chopped down, kilometers of barbed wire fencing and boundary walls made and valuable agricultural land dug up.
(The writer is a heritage historian)