MARGAO
Social activists Judith Almeida and Adv Iris Passainha have on Tuesday said that notifying the existing sand dunes from Velsao to Cavelossim belt will not affect the tourism and shack owners on the beaches.
In fact, the duo said it will strengthen the whole belt with heavy flow of tourists. “In reality, tourists are interested to have serene and cool environment with sand dunes and bushes on the coastal area and not manmade artificial environment. It is God’s blessing to have sand dunes in whole coastal belt which act as first line of defense protecting the area during environmental disaster,” the duo said, in reply to the statements made by Benaulim MLA Churchill Alemao that the entire Velsao-Cavelossim beach belt is being wrongly shown as a sand dune.
Terming as completely baseless the allegations made by the Benaulim MLA, Adv Iris and Judith said teams comprising of expert members and other officials have visited the whole stretch of CRZ area from Cavelossim to Velsao in order to check the details of objections and suggestions received from the stakeholders.
“Thereafter, ground truthing was conducted by the expert members to ascertain the height, length and width of the sand dunes existing in the field. Thus, their exercise of ground truthing has facilitated to identify the location of sand dunes which demarcated the already existing sand dunes at site in the Coastal CRZ area,” the duo asserted.
