Beach erosion matter of ’serious concern’, says Goa governor

September 14th, 2009 Texas announces $135.4M coastal protection planHOUSTON — Texas announced Monday that it was embarking on the biggest coastal protection effort in state history to fight beach erosion and defend against future hurricanes. The $135.4 million plan comes just a year after Hurricane Ike's powerful storm surge damaged thousands of homes in Galveston, the neighboring Bolivar Peninsula and other communities across southeast Texas.

September 14th, 2009 DHAKA - A 10 km stretch of Teknaf beach in southeastern Bangladesh has turned barren after over 30,000 trees were felled in the last seven days. The forest department remained "a silent spectator of the mindless tree felling", The Daily Star said Monday.

September 9th, 2009 Man allegedly flings jellyfish at teens at beachMADEIRA BEACH, Fla. — A 41-year-old man was arrested on Monday at at Madeira Beach after witnesses said he repeatedly pretended to drown, then allegedly began tossing jellyfish at nearby teenagers.

September 7th, 2009 1 killed in Haiti mudslide after few hours of rainMOUNTROIS, Haiti — A mudslide set off by several hours of heavy rain swept into at least 32 houses and shacks made of tin, concrete and dirt walls early Monday, killing at least one person in this Haitian beach town. Civil protection chief Marie-Alta Jean-Baptiste said two other people were missing, while residents put the number at four.

September 4th, 2009 TORONTO - Mammoth farming projects can erode the earth's surface at rates comparable to those of the world's largest rivers and glaciers. A new University of British Columbia (UBC) study offers stark evidence of how humans are reshaping the planet.

July 27th, 2009 PANAJI - Leader of opposition in the Goa assembly Manohar Parrikar said here Monday that MV River Princess, a cargo vessel which has beached off Sinquerim, is being used as a transit point for drugs. Speaking during the monsoon session of the assembly, the former chief minister and senior Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader alleged that sale of drugs in Goa was rampant and that the narcotics cartels were now using the beached ship for hoarding and disbursing drugs.

July 27th, 2009 HAVANA - Erosion is threatening the famous beach resort of Varadero in eastern Cuba prompting the government to use some 380,000 cubic metres of sand to counter it, Prensa Latina reported Monday. A team of divers, dredgers and heavy machine operators extracted the sand and dumped it along a 700 metre stretch of the beach.

July 20th, 2009 PANAJI - Seven beaches of Goa, where many popular tourist resorts were located, are reeling under the threat of sea erosion, state Water Resources Minister Filipe Neri Rodrigues said. "In all, 21 stretches which are spread over a length of 11.22 km (of coastal area) have been affected," he said in a written reply to the state legislative assembly.

July 15th, 2009 Shark washes up and dies on NY beachBABYLON, N.Y. — A 20-foot-long basking shark that washed ashore on a beach on New York's Long Island appears to have died from some kind of illness.

June 15th, 2009 High court steps into Fla. beach erosion disputeWASHINGTON — The Supreme Court has stepped into a property-rights dispute over plans to rebuild eroded beaches on Florida's Gulf coast.

June 11th, 2009 KOLKATA - West Bengal Governor Gopalkrishna Gandhi has welcomed the imposition of restrictions on the use of plastic in the Darjeeling hills to check pollution caused by non bio-degradable products. Gandhi Tuesday congratulated the Darjeeling municipality on this far-sighted move and suggested that other hilly regions emulate the step.

March 15th, 2009 PANAJI - Inhabitants of the touristy coastal resort of Candolim in Goa have threatened to boycott the Lok Sabha elections if the ship MV River Princess, which has been beached there for nearly nine years, is not towed away soon. The decision comes after a meeting by the River Princess Hatao Manch (RPHM), a pressure group formed by the villagers of Candolim, to force the government to move the cargo ship which had run aground on Candolim beach in 2000.

January 25th, 2009 PANAJI - Over 200 people including a legislator of the ruling Congress party were arrested Monday morning as they were marching towards this state capital to protest the government's failure to remove a cargo ship which had run aground off Candolim eight years ago. Congress legislator Agnelo Fernandes, who was leading the protest, was booked under Section 151 of the Criminal Procedure Code (arrest to prevent commission of cognizable offences), along with his supporters.

January 22nd, 2009 PANAJI - On the heels of a warning issued by the National Institute of Oceanography (NIO) about the steady erosion of Goa's most popular beach due to the presence of a beached cargo ship, two state government agencies have also raised concerns about the socio-environmental fallout. Even as the NIO, in its report on the shoreline, had confirmed that nearly 1.1 km of the beach along the Candolim-Sinquerim stretch had already been eroded, the administration has warned of a potential catastrophe, if action is not taken promptly.

January 21st, 2009 PANAJI - Run aground on a stormy night eight years ago at the picturesque Sinquerim beach, the precariously placed MV River Princess is now threatening to erode Goa's most well-known beach stretch, according to a report by a marine research organisation. The Panaji-based National Institute of Oceanography (NIO), in its latest report on shoreline changes in the state, has concluded that non-removal of the beached cargo ship would have serious repercussions for the popular shoreline, which is the nerve centre of the tourism industry in Goa.