The Hindu : Front Page : Poets sang of its glory once, now it carries sewage

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Tuesday, Oct 16, 2007
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Poets sang of its glory once, now it carries sewage

R. Ilangovan

Rare sight: Tirumanimutharu, the one-time lifeline of Salem district, in full flow when Shevaroyan hills experienced heavy rain recently. On other days it carries filth and dirt only.

SALEM: Its water is dark and foul. The banks and its bed have been cemented to ensure a choke-free flow of not the pristine water but dirt and drainage. No. It is not a drainage channel. It is a river from which once, the Tamil classics claim, fresh water pearls were harvested.

The river, Tirumanimutharu, sung by poets of yore for its crystal clear water and rich civilisation, is now dead. This one-time lifeline of the district that vivisects the Salem city into two halves has now been turned into a major drainage channel carrying the city’s filth to River Cauvery into which it drains at Nanchai Idayaru near Velur in Namakkal district.

The river has a glorious past. British records say that it takes its rise in the southern slopes of Shevaroy Hills and also subject to sudden freshes. But today it is choked. Plantations and new habitations have stymied its uninterrupted flow down the hill. The river, said the British Engineer R.N.L. Reid, who studied it in depth, runs to 75 miles and covers an area of 717 square miles. But just a mere 2.8 km. of its journey through a city of nine lakhs has killed it effectively. It now carries raw sewage, points out Tamil Nadan, Sahitya Academy winner, who has written an anguished book, close to an elegy, on this dead river.

Records show that the river has been systematically annihilated. Rapid urbanisation forced the civic body in late 1880s to sound the first death knell by taking the decision of letting the sewers into it. On its banks thrived commerce and trade leading to severe pollution that snuffed out any form of life in it. Today it carries loads of fecal pollution such as e.coli, toxic materials and other pollutants, defying all the recommended guidelines of physical and chemical parameters, fixed for a waterway. The sewage from households, hotels and eateries and oil waste from workshops directly enter the river.

“We no longer test its water, which is an exercise in futile. It is just a massive sewer,” says an official in Salem Corporation.

The second phase of the Tirumanimutharu beautification project, lining the river bed and banks with cement slabs, will be undertaken shortly to ensure a smooth flow of drainage.

It is to ensure a steady flow of storm water and sullage. But there seems to be a light at the end of the dark tunnel. Once the Under Ground Drainage project is taken up, the sewage load can be reduced, says the official thus suggesting that the lifeline of the past could be resurrected.

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