Foam Mattings (India) Ltd. (Fomil), a State government undertaking, is all set to use coir geotextiles and coir bags for the construction of eco-friendly sea walls and sea groynes instead of granite boulders. S. Ratnakumar, Managing Director of Fomil, told The Hindu here that the company had already used the products in two portions of the Vizhinjam harbour at Thiruvananthapuram. The Harbour Engineering Department (HED) had used them to construct two groynes, each 50 m long and four m wide. Mr. Ratnakumar said that satisfied with the geotextile groynes at Vizhinjam, the HED was going to use the products for the construction of the harbour road inside the Tangasseri Breakwater Complex at Kollam. The geotextile sea wall was found not only to be eco-friendly but also fishermen friendly as it did not damage their boats.The research and development committee of the State government's National Coir Research and Management Institute has sanctioned Fomil's proposal to conduct a feasibility study on the construction of sea walls in the coastal areas of Kollam. The study follows a request from Kollam Collector A. Shajahan.A pilot sea wall project has been proposed at Kazhukanthuruthu in Alapad panchayat in the district. Mr. Ratnakumar said Fomil's coir geotextiles had been successfully used in the construction of a 1.4-km causeway at Thuravur in Alappuzha district. It had been used to strengthen the sidewalls of water harvesting ponds in various places in the State and in the yard of the 400-kV substation of the National Power Grid Corporation at Dharwad in Karnataka.
The Hindu, 26h January 2009
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