Kerala - Pathanamthitta   

Chanthathode canal in peril

Staff Reporter

Weeds clog the waterway, encroachments rampant along the canal

Hazard to nature: The Chanthathode canal linking Thiruvalla with Alappuzha.

PATHANAMTHITTA: Chanthathode canal, a once commercially vibrant waterway, linking Thiruvalla with Alappuzha, is facing the threat of destruction owing to wanton encroachment along the canal. The many drainage systems in the region empty into the canal, polluting it. The weeds too have clogged the waterway.

The canal, constructed in 1958, served as a navigation route for transporting hill produces, vegetables and copra to Alappuzha from the hilly tracts of Central Travancore. The nearly 7 km long, 30 ft wide waterway from the Thiruvalla market meanders through the Upper Kuttanad villages of Vengal, Alamthuruthy, Mepral, etc., to join the Pampa at Muttar.

Cargo vessels (‘kettuvalloms’) carrying goods from Thiruvalla to Alappuzha was a common scene till 1980. The local people of Upper Kuttanad depended on the mobile traders taking vegetables, fishes, provisions to their doorsteps in small country boats. The canal was a main water transport route between Thiruvalla and Alappuzha till the late 1980s.

However, the importance of the waterway began to decline with the construction of roads linking Thiruvalla with Alappuzha and other villages of Upper Kuttanad. Now, water transport has become a thing of the past.

Small boat landings along the canal too disappeared with time. A major portion of the canal has been encroached upon during the past two decades.

Three years ago, the District Tourism Promotion Council (DTPC) set up a water park in Chanthathode near the Thiruvalla market at a cost of Rs.25 lakh.

The water park offered boating facility and had a cafetaria and hall-cum-view tower, besides concrete footpaths on the banks of the canal. The DTPC failed to curb the pollution caused by the effluents discharged into the cannel. The waste generated in the market as well as other parts of the town all found its way into the canal.

Visitors were reluctant to enter the park due to the stench emanating from the polluted waters. But alarming pollution problems forced the DTPC to shut down the park amid protests from the public.

Though DTPC secretary V. Santhoshkumar said the Department of Public Works had prepared a Rs.6-lakh project to divert the two drainage systems to a nearby paddy field, nothing concrete has materialised so far.

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