India to adequately explore beneficial use of dredged material

The Ministry of Ports, Shipping and Waterways in order to bring the concept of ‘Waste to Wealth’ in the dredging sector has issued addendum to the Dredging Guidelines for Major Ports 2021.

This will make provision for use of dredging material for beneficial purposes in bidding process with necessary clearance from the authorities.

The Dredging Guidelines for Major Ports were announced in 2021 to ascertain estimation of project cost, based on acceptable international standards.

With this addendum to the previous guidelines, the beneficial use of dredged material has to be adequately explored and accordingly the concept of ‘Waste to Wealth’ in the dredging sector has been highlighted, which is now being issued to the Major Ports, Inland Waterways Authority of India (IWAI), and Dredging Corporation of India (DCI) which are under administrative control of the Ministry of Ports, Shipping and Waterways.

Union Minister for Ports, Shipping and Waterways, Sarbananda Sonowal highlighted: “the implementation of the dredging project with beneficial use of dredged material, is expected to bring down the cost of the dredging and also ensure environment sustainability as per the concept of ‘Waste to Wealth’ and the mantra of 3R – Reduce, Reuse and Recycle given by our Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi.”

The Addendum to the Dredging Guidelines outlines the wide range of beneficial use of dredged material including engineering use for construction purposes, environmental enhancement including beach nourishment etc. There is need for extensive study of the characteristics of the dredged soil with Geo technical data of the dredging area of the dredging project.