PALAKKAD: A Rs 100-crore fund was raised to protect the 209-kilometre Bharatapuzha from decay and encroachments.
The River Management Fund (RMF) was created specifically to recharge the river by protecting the embankments, mapping the banks and afforesting the catchment area. Sand auditing was also envisaged in the scheme. The fund was, however, left almost unused, said Dr P S Panicker, Bharathapuzha Samrakshana Samiti secretary.
A good portion of the fund ended up buying vehicles to check illegal sand mining as the government did not supply the vehicles.However, the RMF mobilised through cess on auctioning of river sand and seizure of illegal sand were being used to purchase vehicles to again seize sand, finally giving birth to yet another vicious circle, said Dr Panicker.
Apart from it, fund diversion also added to its relapse. In 2006, `1.82 crore was diverted to Kottayam district and `68 lakh to Idukki district, which incidentally happened to be the constituency of the then Revenue Minister, he added.Rivalry between officials has pulled down yet anther project. Due to the tug-o-war between Revenue and Irrigation departments, the idea of setting up Bharathapuzha Development Authority in 1992 has since been left on paper although the Centre for Water Resources Development and Management (CWRDM) had prepared a bye-law for the authority. “Around 4,000 million cubic metres of water from Bharathapuzha flows into the Arabian sea annually as per the discharge records of the Central Water Commission (CWC) at Kumbidi.
The maximum storage capacity of all six reservoirs in Kerala and four in TN on the basin together is 600 million cubic metres.While increasing the capacity of the dams was not thought feasible, the outflow of the excess water should be controlled and used for some fruitful purposes.
As the flow of the river also needs to be maintained for a healthy eco-system, viable alternative will be to regulate the water,” said deputy director of Water Resources Department, Sudheer Padikkal.Natural plants like bamboo, wild bushes, pandanus and screw pine should be grown to help sustain the eco-system and living organisms, said secretary of the Bharathapuzha Samrakshana Samithi Indianur Gopi. C P Mohammed, Pattambi MLA and chairman of the Legislative Committee on Environment, said the committee has recommended for formation of a Nila Development Authority to protect the river by checking pollution, regulating sand mining, encroachments and construction of checkdams.