As Pampa silts up, floods become the new normal in Kerala’s Ranni
For nearly eight decades, K.M. Oonittan believed the Pampa would never enter his home. The retired college lecturer had lived on the banks of Kerala’s
For nearly eight decades, K.M. Oonittan believed the Pampa would never enter his home. The retired college lecturer had lived on the banks of Kerala’s sacred river for over 80 years without witnessing a major flood. That changed in August 2018. At the age of 82, he watched floodwaters engulf his house, forcing his family to flee with whatever belongings they could salvage to a house atop a nearby hill. Since then, floods have returned with alarming regularity, the latest only days ago. “The 2018 deluge changed the entire landscape,” says the 90-year-old. “The floodwaters that rushed down from the hills filled the river with sand and silt. The Pampa has lost its capacity to hold water. Now, whenever the hills receive heavy rain, Ranni floods.” An annual event His observation has become the dominant narrative across Ranni, a township wedged between two elevated stretches of land. Traders and residents now speak of floods almost as an annual event, each leaving behind losses running into crores.
“The authorities need to study the impact of changes in the riverbed, sand deposition, obstruction of natural drainage and the river gradient. Illegal encroachments on canals, streams and other natural drainage channels that impede the free flow of floodwater must also be removed,” says C.V. Mathew, president of the local unit of the Kerala Vyapari Vyavasayi Ekopana Samithi. Experts say the transformation of the Pampa began long before the 2018 floods. Years of unregulated sand mining stripped the river of its natural sand layer, leaving behind exposed silt. Then came the devastating floods. “The floods of August 2018, followed by successive flood events, deposited massive quantities of silt and sand along the riverbed, fundamentally altering its morphology,” says a senior Irrigation department official. “At traditional bathing ghats, it was silt and not sand that greeted those entering the river,“ he noted. Reduced capacity Today, the signs are impossible to miss. The capacity of the Pampa to hold water has shrunk dramatically.
As water levels recede, vast stretches of silt emerge across the riverbed. Grass and shrubs have colonised these deposits, turning sections of the river into grassy flats during summer. According to Irrigation officials, the riverbed beneath the Athikkayam bridge near Ranni is almost entirely buried under sandbars. Downstream of the Vazhakkunnam low-level bridge, the river narrows to barely 50 metres in places. Elsewhere, sandbanks have become stable enough to support trees, an indication of how drastically the river has changed. After the 2018 floods, the Water Resources department launched a desiltation programme and deployed earthmoving machinery at a few ghats. The effort, however, petered out before completion. The excavated sand and silt still lie abandoned along the banks, now overgrown with vegetation. The need of the hour Experts, meanwhile, warn that without a scientific assessment and a comprehensive river restoration plan, the degradation of the Pampa could become irreversible. A sand audit conducted by the Revenue department in 2020 estimated that the Pampa contained 5.43 million cubic metres of sand and recommended it as one of 17 rivers where regulated sand mining could resume.
The BriefWire