Living in houses perched on the edge of a canal, the water level of which can rise any moment, brings its own share of unpredictability. Almost every monsoon, this is the plight of many who live on the banks of the city’s network of canals, including the Amayizhanjan canal, the Ulloor canal and the Pattom canal.
Many a night, they are woken up by water seeping in through the doors, forcing them to shift all the household items they can gather to safer places.
“Following the incessant rain two nights back, water entered my mother’s house beside the Ulloor canal at 2 a.m. Though it receded by morning, this is a constant worry. In 2018, 13 families from the area were shifted to a rehabilitation camp for a few days. There is a lot of accumulated silt. The funds being provided for each wards for pre-monsoon cleaning is insufficient for this,” says Pattom ward councillor Remya Ramesh.
The situation is not much different downstream at Kannammoola, where the Ulloor canal is joined by the Pattom canal too. Encroachments over the years and constant dumping of waste has made it a flood-prone area.
“The encroachment and closing of side canals, which connect the main canal to a pond in the Kannammoola area has also affected the water draining in the low-lying areas. Though the Corporation constantly cleans the accumulated waste under the smaller bridges that criss-cross the canal, it again gets stuck during major rains. After the flooding in 2018, they got barges to clean the canal, which ensured that there was not much flooding last year. But this year, due to COVID-19, the focus was less on cleaning up the canals, which can create problems,” said Anilkumar, a resident of Kannammoola.
Two projects
According to officials of the Major Irrigation Department, two major projects that are about to be executed could solve much of the issues in the region.
“The department had recently removed all the obstructions in these canals in flood-prone regions. The outgrowth near the bridges were also removed. But, in the route from Murinjapalam to Kannammoola, there are areas with very low bank height of 1.5 metre, where flooding can happen during heavy rain even if everything is cleared. We have a ₹9 crore project for the Ulloor canal for raising the height of the side walls, wherever it is less, as well as for de-silting. The estimate has been sent to the Finance Department for administrative sanction. For the region from Kannammoola to Akkulam, there is a ₹25 crore project, which has now been tendered. The Corporation has been cleaning up the Amayizhanjan canal near the Pazhavangadi area,” says Anilkumar, the Executive Engineer (in charge).
He says that the increased intensity and duration of rain in recent years has compounded the problem, as the narrow canals have only a limited water holding capacity, even if the entire water flows unobstructed to the Akkulam lake.