Restoration debate: Conservation or destruction

Conservationists are up in arms against a project launched by the government to desilt rivers to control floods, which have become an annual phenomenon since 2018, alleging that it has led to unscrupulous sand-mining. While the government maintains transparency in works, conservationists are unconvinced

Setting out southwards along Main Central Road beyond Thiruvalla, a township in Pathanamthitta, a vacant plot of land with truckloads of sand comes into view. ‘River sand with passes for sale’, reads a banner that hangs on a tree nearby. 

Ordinary it may seem, but the image offers a jarring contrast to another board that stands just a few 100 meters away. It declares that the second phase of rejuvenation of the Varattar , a river that has long ceased to flow, is under progress here.

The nine-km waterbody, a tributary of the Pampa that meanders through the three grama panchayats of Eraviperoor, Kuttoor, and Thiruvanvandoor and Chengannur municipality in Alappuzha, used to be the lifeline of people in the region and acted as a natural flood control mechanism between the Pampa and Manimala rivers, carrying the excess water during the monsoons. 

Indiscriminate sand-mining and encroachment over the previous decades sounded its death knell and it’s been reduced to a few wet patches of land.

For the past three months, men and machines have been working overtime to clear the silt and debris accumulated along the riverbed. Hundreds of truckloads of ‘construction-grade sand’ too have been driven out of it, which is now being sold off.

As the volume of sand being taken from the river has increased, so have the concerns of the local people, who have started to fight the dredgers, worried about riverbed degradation and the impact on the riparian environment.

“Dumping yards for river sand, which also double up as selling points, have cropped up at least a couple of places while the ghat committees and the local bodies concerned are being consistently kept in the dark about the nature of rejuvenation works,” says Harish Kumar A.S., convener of the Varattar Protection Council, an outfit formed by local people.