Port and Marine Pollution: Legal Remedies for Fishermen

Fishermen hit by port or marine pollution have three legal routes, and they work best together. You can force the pollution to stop through complaints to the State Pollution Control Board, the coastal zone authority and the port authority, followed by the National Green Tribunal. You can claim compensation for lost catch, damaged nets and boats and lost fishing days under section 15 of the NGT Act, within 5 years. And for a new port or expansion, you can object at the public hearing and appeal the environmental clearance to the NGT within 30 days. Records of your catch and the damage decide how far each route goes.

This guide is for fishing families, boat owners, fish workers and fishermen's cooperatives whose catch or fishing grounds are being damaged by a port, a jetty, dredging, cargo handling, ship waste or an industrial outfall into the sea. It explains who regulates what, how to prove the loss, and when to go to the tribunal. It is part of our series on CRZ violations and coastal damage.

For a sudden oil spill, read our separate guide on oil spill compensation, which deals with ship insurers and spill claims in detail. This page is about the slower, everyday damage that ports and coastal industries cause over months and years.

The essentials

What can fishermen do when a port or industry pollutes the sea?

Think of it as three separate jobs. The first is to stop the harm: dust falling on the water, dredged mud dumped on a fishing ground, untreated effluent from an outfall. That is done through the regulators and, if they fail, through the NGT under section 14 of the NGT Act. The second is to get paid for what has already been lost, through a compensation claim under section 15. The third, for a port that is only planned or expanding, is to get the project's conditions right before it is built, through the public hearing and an appeal against the environmental clearance.

Most fishing communities do only one of these, and usually late. They protest when a big incident happens, the port promises action, and nothing is written down. Two years later, the catch has fallen but there is no record of how much, and the clearance deadline passed long ago. Doing all three in step, with records kept from the start, is what changes the outcome.

The legal standing is not in doubt. Section 18 of the NGT Act allows any person aggrieved, including a representative body or organisation, to apply. A fishermen's cooperative society, a federation, a panchayat or a group of boat owners can file in their own name.

How ports and coastal industries damage fishing

Dredging is the most common complaint. Deepening a channel throws up plumes of silt that cloud the water and smother the seabed, and the dredged material has to go somewhere. Clearances normally specify a dumping site at sea. When contractors dump closer to save fuel, the spoil lands on inshore fishing grounds and crab beds. Breakwaters and new berths can also block traditional boat routes and landing beaches, or shift sand so that a nearby beach erodes and the boats have nowhere to land.

Cargo handling brings its own damage. Coal, iron ore, bauxite and fertiliser handled in the open release dust that settles on the water, on drying fish and on nets. Spills during ship loading go straight into the harbour. Ships and barges may discharge bilge water, oily waste, sewage or garbage illegally in port limits.

Industrial outfalls are the third source. Chemical clusters, refineries, desalination plants and coastal power plants discharge treated, or sometimes untreated, effluent into the sea through pipelines. Power plants also release large volumes of warm cooling water, which drives fish away from the area around the outlet. Our guide on thermal power and fly ash pollution covers the ash side of coastal power stations.

Problem, regulator and where to complain first

The laws fishermen can rely on

Can fishermen claim compensation for loss of catch?

Yes. Section 15 of the NGT Act allows relief and compensation to victims of pollution and environmental damage, and restitution of property and of the environment. Loss of fishing income, damage to nets, boats and engines, extra fuel spent going further out, and the cost of restoring a fishery can all be claimed. The claim must be filed within 5 years of when the cause of action first arose, with up to 60 more days for sufficient cause.

What decides the amount is proof of the loss, not the strength of feeling. A tribunal wants to see what you were catching before, what you catch now, and why the difference is due to the port or outfall and not to weather, overfishing or a bad season. Monthly catch figures from the cooperative, auction or sale slips, boat registration and fishing licences, and fisheries department landing data for the area build that picture. Where a whole community is affected, the tribunal may ask an expert body to assess the loss rather than go boat by boat.

Compensation awarded in such cases often goes to a fund for the affected community, or is distributed through the district administration or fisheries department, rather than paid directly to each claimant. A claim that lists members, boats and losses in an organised way is easier to implement. Our hub on compensation for pollution damage explains how these claims are built.

A port is coming to our coast. What rights do we have now?

This is the stage where fishermen have the most influence and use it the least. Ports need environmental clearance and CRZ clearance, and most go through a public hearing held by the State Board in the district. The draft EIA and its summary have to be made available before the hearing. Read the fisheries chapter. If it ignores your landing beach, your fishing grounds or the creek where boats shelter in the monsoon, say so at the hearing and in writing, with maps and numbers.

Ask for specific conditions, not general promises: the location of the dredged spoil site away from fishing grounds, a guaranteed boat passage through the breakwater, a protected landing area, dust controls on cargo, independent monitoring of water quality and catch, and a livelihood support plan that names the affected villages. Conditions written into the clearance can be enforced later. Promises made by a company officer at the hearing usually cannot.

If the clearance is granted without dealing with these issues, it can be appealed to the NGT under section 16 within 30 days of communication, with up to 60 more days for sufficient cause. In port appeals Advocate B.K. Singh has handled, the strongest ground has often been what the EIA left out: a fishing village not shown on the map, a spawning season not considered, or a dumping site plotted on top of a known fishing ground. Our page on challenging an environmental clearance covers the appeal route.

How fishermen can act against port or marine pollution

These steps assume the harm is continuing. For a single sudden incident such as a spill, the first two steps become urgent within hours, not weeks.

The relevant bench depends on the state: the western coastal states file at the Western Zone Bench at Pune, the southern states at Chennai, and West Bengal and Odisha at the Eastern Zone Bench at Kolkata.

Documents and evidence to collect

Why sampling decides marine pollution cases

The sea dilutes and moves everything, so marine evidence disappears faster than evidence on land. A plume visible in the morning is gone by evening. That is why the request for official sampling should go the same day, in writing, and why your own photos should show the time and place clearly. Ask for both water and sediment samples. Sediment holds metals and oil long after the water has cleared.

Samples taken by the State Board or a recognised laboratory carry far more weight than bottles collected by villagers and tested later, because the tribunal will ask how the sample was collected, sealed and transported. If you do take your own, note the time, place, depth and who collected it, seal it, and get it to a recognised laboratory quickly. Our guide on expert and laboratory evidence in the NGT explains what holds up.

In larger cases, the tribunal often appoints a joint committee, sometimes with a fisheries or oceanography institution, to study the area. Parties can file objections to the committee's report, and fishermen should do so where it ignores their observations or samples at the wrong time and place.

Mistakes that weaken fishermen's cases

• No catch records. Without figures from before and after, a claim becomes one side's word against the other's.
• Relying only on protest. Blockades and meetings may bring promises, but promises not written into an order or clearance condition are rarely kept.
• Missing the 30-day window. Once the appeal period against an EC passes, the project's design is very hard to change.
• Scattered individual claims. A hundred separate letters are easy to ignore; one claim by a cooperative with a members' list is not.
• Signing livelihood agreements without reading them. A one-time payment often comes with a clause giving up all future claims.
• Blaming the wrong source. If several industries discharge into the same bay, the application must show which source causes what, or name them all and ask for a study.

What ports and coastal units are expected to do

For port operators and industries reading this, most fishermen's cases are won or lost on compliance records. Keep the dredged spoil log with vessel tracking, the dust monitoring data, the outfall sampling results and the half-yearly EC compliance reports accurate and filed on time. A gap between what the reports say and what the satellite or the boats show is what turns a complaint into an adverse order.

A working grievance system with the fishing villages, written commitments on boat passage and landing, and early engagement with the cooperative cost far less than an NGT case and a compensation fund. Where a notice has already come from the board, our hub on industrial water pollution covers the response, and the guide on EC conditions not followed explains how condition breaches are pursued.

Related guides for coastal communities

If the port or a developer is filling creeks or mudflats near your village, our guide on when coastal land reclamation is illegal explains the CRZ rules. Where mangroves that shelter fish breeding are being cleared, see mangrove cutting laws and penalties. For a beach resort blocking access to the shore, the guide on hotels and resorts violating CRZ rules is the place to start.

Sudden incidents follow a different track. A pipeline burst, a tanker collision or a chemical release at a port terminal is an accident, and section 17 of the NGT Act makes the operator liable without proof of fault. Our guide on chemical leaks and industrial accident compensation explains interim relief and how such claims are assessed. Keep your catch register going through and after any incident, because it is the only reliable way to show how long the damage lasted.