In what appears to be a bid to help private land developers, Mangaluru City Corporation has remained a mute spectator to the construction of a road and a culvert encroaching upon a live rivulet on the outskirts of the city.
Consequently, the Pachchanadi rivulet that flows in the corporation ward represented by Mayor Kavitha Sanil appears to be under threat of an “engineered slow death” to join the list of many sewer drains of Mangaluru.
A mud road, about 25 ft wide has come up on the sewer line that goes from Pachchanadi sewage treatment plant (STP), right from the rivulet’s bridge on the Pachchanadi-Bondel Road for distance of about 1.5 km. A culvert also has been built on the stream to facilitate road connectivity for land development activities atop Pachchanadi hillock.
When asked whether the corporation had built the road and the culvert, Ms. Kavitha Sanil replied in the negative. She told The Hindu that private developers have formed the road with muck cleared from the hillock and also constructed the culvert. There was no permission either from the corporation, she said.
A farmer residing adjacent to the rivulet, who did not want to be identified, said that life has become difficult after the mud road was formed. Several trucks move everyday raising clouds of dust affecting plantation crops. The road has shrunk the rivulet’s width from about 50 ft to just about 15 ft and residents are worried over floods during the monsoon, he said.
The farmer wondered what the corporation would do if the sewer lines, buried beneath the new road, get damaged. He alleged that the corporation has facilitated road construction to favour land developers to get clearances from authorities concerned. The rivulet, which once was filled with fresh water, is now filled with sewage let out on its upstream, the farmer, who was grazing his cow, told The Hindu . The development atop Pachchanadi hillock is bound to reduce fresh water flow into the rivulet and induce more sewage, he feared.
Meanwhile, a resident of the village said that two realtors are developing the area on the Pachchanadi hillock. In fact, the location is connected by a government road starting from Pachchanadi STP (Moodushedde-Bondel Road) even as developers have found a short-cut along the rivulet.
