Coimbatore Corporation is expected to speed up the Sanganoor Canal development work, which has progressed so far at a snail’s pace.
To expedite the execution of the ₹49-crore project and take stock of the work completed thus far, Mayor Kalpana Anandakumar along with Corporation Commissioner Raja Gopal Sunkara and other senior officials and councillors inspected the canal on Wednesday.
Sources said the Corporation that had been working on the Sanganoor Canal project since 2016, started developing the stretch between Mettupalayam Road and Sathyamangalam Road a couple of years ago.
In the 2,300m stretch the Corporation would dredge the canal, strengthen the banks, concrete line the canal bed, remove encroachments and build roads along the banks to provide an additional connectivity between the two arterial roads
The Corporation sources said the proposal for which the State Government had given sanction mentioned ‘stone pitching’ the canal bed. After the work began, the Corporation realised that stone pitching the bed would not curb the growth of shrubs and cleaning the canal once again could lead to problems.
Therefore it was decided to concrete line the canal bed, the sources said and added that the change in details warranted returning to the State Government for approval and that was the reason for the slow start.
Though the Corporation would concrete line the bed, it would construct rainwater harvesting structures to allow percolation. It would construct such structures every 100m or so.
Central Zone chairperson Meena Loganathan, who was part of the Wednesday’s inspection team, said she had urged the Corporation to start work as soon as possible because the South West Monsoon was only a month or so away. If rainwater were to flow through the canal, it would result it silt piling over the area that the Corporation had worked on.
She said she had also asked the civic body to serve fresh notices on residents who had encroached upon the canal in the 2,300m project area and immediately remove them from the place by providing alternative accommodation at the Tamil Nadu Urban Habitat Development Board tenement in Keeranatham.
