The sand and debris that had crashed into the Pampa from the surrounding hills during the August floods will be up for e-auction from May 20. The process might seem highly resilient; a community knocked down by the floods is up on its feet and turning the tables on the disaster.
But environmentalists now question the ecological impropriety of the decision to dredge out sand from the Pampa, even if it was dumped there by the unprecedented floods.
Up for grabs would be over two lakh metre cube of sand that had already been removed from the river and heaped along Pamba Hill Top and Chakkupalam. The e-auction will be held on four days this month; May 20, 23, 27 and 30.
The sand will be auctioned in lots of 1,000 metre cube each. On each of the days, 55 lots or 55,000 metre cube of sand will be e-auctioned. The proceeds from the sale will go into the Rebuild Kerala Initiative. The auction is done through the e-commerce site of the Centre's Metal and Scrap Trading Corporation (MSTC). National Centre for Earth Science has certified the sand as suitable for construction and landscaping.
The contract to desilt Pampa river was granted to Tata Projects Limited, which took up the work during the second half of September 2018. Officials had then said that the depth of the Pampa, especially from the upstream of Triveni to Cheriyanavattom, had been reduced considerably due to the deposit of sand. The Triveni bridge was almost fully buried under the falling debris. It was also felt that if the deposition was not removed it would cause huge problems for the river and its banks in future.
“There will be no environment issues if the sand is removed to restore the minimum width and depth of the river ecosystem,” said Dinesan V P, the head of the Geomatics wing of Centre for Water Resources Development and Management (CWRDM). Dinesan had inspected Pampa right after the floods. “The river was so choked that it was filled up to four metres with the silt that the floods deposited,” he said.
Kerala Forest Research Institute's T V Sajeev, however, said that sand should not be removed from the river on a whim. “You cannot remove the sand without conducting a sand audit,” he said. “The sand is integral to the river ecosystem, and is critical for the continuous flow of water and also for aquatic life. If too much of sand has accumulated, the river has its instinctive ways of adapting to the development. Humans need not worry,” Sajeev said.
G Shankar, one of the state's leading geologists, said that a 'sand budgeting' was important before interventions were made in a river. “We should know how much of sand can be removed from the river. We should also assess how altered the course of the river is. There should be a thorough knowledge of the river's characteristics. We should also know whether by removing the sand we are exposing the river bank in the area to erosion,” Shankar said.
Dinesan of CWRDM said though a study was important it was not necessary in the case of Pampa as the intention was only to keep it flowing. KFRI's Sajeev said that a random removal, without a study, could be disastrous. “There is nothing called a judicious removal of sand from a river when you have no idea how the river behaves,” Sajeev said. Pampa Parirakshana Samithy's N K Sukumaran Nair also said that the removal had been done arbitrarily, without carrying out any study.
Once the sand is fully removed, KFRI's Sajeev said that it would be just clay on the river bed. This, according to him, would adversely affect breeding. “A river bed of sand will allow fish eggs to roll over it. Such a rolling process will allow the embryo to breathe. But on clay, these eggs will get stuck and, deprived of breathing space, they will die,” Sajeev said.
It were concerns like these that prompted the Thrissur district collector to recently reject the demand to remove sand from the Chalakkudy river, which too had overflown during the August floods. It is also said that the removal of sand requires an environment clearance from the Centre, from the Ministry of Environment and Forests.
However, Ranni divisional forest officer M Unnikrishnan said that the Forest Department, which will be organising the auction, had secured a clearance from the MoEF. “Fact is, there is no need for an MoEF clearance to desilt a river. Still, we have got the go ahead from the Centre,” Unnikrishnan said. “It is not an environment clearance though,” he added.
