The Hindu : Kerala / Thiruvananthapuram News : Two projects fail to take off

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Kerala - Thiruvananthapuram

Two projects fail to take off

Special Correspondent

Failure to check pollution of River Karamana

— Photo: S. Gopakumar

Work in progress: A temporary bridge being built across the Karamana river at Thiruvallam as part of the preparations for ‘vavu bali’ on August 1.

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Thousands of devotees visiting the famed Parasurama temple at Thiruvallam on August 1 to offer ‘vavu bali’ will have to brave the unsanitary conditions caused by the heavy pollution of the downstream stretches of the Karamana river, even as two major government-sponsored projects to check sewage discharge into the water remain bogged down.

The Travancore Devaswom Board (TDB) had started cleaning and de-silting the river near the ghat where devotees immerse themselves in the water. Efforts are on to construct check-dams using sandbags. Temple authorities said clean water would be pumped into the section separated by the check-dams on the day before ‘vavu bali.’

Despite government’s repeated assurances, there had been no efforts to address the root cause of the pollution of the river. The dark, foul water and the dense growth of water hyacinth pose an environmental hazard. Local people fear that the unsanitary conditions would lead to a public health crisis and affect the region’s nascent tourism industry.

Treatment plants

According to George Mercier, MLA, the pollution problem can be resolved only by stopping the discharge of sewage and waste water into the Karamana and Killi rivers. He said the City Corporation and the State government had failed to construct sewage treatment plants despite getting ample funds from the Union government under the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM).

The Karamana river, flowing through the city, joins the Killi river at Pallathukadavu (upstream of Thiruvallam) and goes around the Edayar island on its way to the Poonthura estuary.

Both the rivers carry large quantities of raw sewage discharged from city drains. Untreated waste water from the Milma dairy plant at Ambalathara is another source of pollution. The heavily polluted Parvathy Puthanar canal joins the river at Munnattumukku near the Poonthura coastal village.

The flow of water on the western side of the island is blocked due to heavy silting at Munnattumukku and accretion of sea sand at Kunnumanal. Local people feel that the pollution of the river could be prevented by dredging the waters on the western side of the Edayar island to facilitate tidal flushing.

In April this year, Minister for Water Resources N.K. Premachandran announced that a weir would be constructed across the Parvathy Puthanar at Munnattumukku to prevent pollutants in the canal from seeping into the Karamana river and contaminating the water in the ‘bali kadavu’ of the Parasurama temple at Thiruvallam.

He promised that work on the weir would commence within a month, but the project is yet to take off.

The Major Irrigation Department was also told to restore the blocked stretch of the canal at Cheriyamuttam that is responsible for the backflow of water from the Parvathy Puthanar to the Karamana river.

The Minister had also said that there would be no financial constraint in tackling the pollution at Thiruvallam and of the Karamana river.

Mr. Mercier said the construction of the weir was yet to be taken up. He, however, added that moves were on to construct a sea wall at Cheriyamuttom, to prevent recurrence of a sand block, and two groins at Panathurakara to the south of Poonthura sandbar to keep the mouth of the river open.

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