PONDA: Fearing flooding of houses in monsoon, Pondaites on Thursday demanded urgent desilting and cleaning of town’s main nullah by the concerned authorities.
The locals want the authorities to desilt and clean the nullah by removing garbage and silt before onset of monsoon.
If you enjoyed reading this article, you can help support our journalism by adding OHeraldo as a preferred source.
“Despite the Curti-Khandepar Village Panchayat and Ponda Municipal Council (PMC) collecting door-to-door garbage, some habitual offenders dump all kinds of garbage waste into the nullah and there is no system to keep a watch over them,” the locals said.
A Ponda local Damodar Naik fears repeat flooding of the houses as nullah basin dumped with garbage is not cleaned yet.
He said, “In Ponda’s main nullah along the 3-km stretch, waste including thermocol, plastics, glass bottles beside domestic and hotel waste water also flows into nullah. If the nullah choked with dumped garbage and silt is not cleaned there will be a repeat flooding of houses, like it happened last year. The internal nullah of the town, connecting the main nullah is also dumped with waste. Similarly, some people residing on the bank of nullah dump their waste directly into nullah.”
“Since nullah have culvert, bandharas along its basin, many times logs of dry wood, branches trap or get stuck into bandharas and pillars of culvert along with garbage waste, thus leading to blocking of monsoon water flow causing flooding. For the past few years, the locals at Nagzar, Curti are witnessing flooding of houses due to nullah water causing damages to their houses and household goods,” Naik said.
The 13-km long nullah originates at Bethora, where some Bethora industrial units allegedly release untreated water and chemical waste into nullah. Recently, some Curti locals complained of dead fish floating in the basin.
Further, the nullah flows down stream at Curti, 3-km stretch in Ponda town, Kavlem and Bandora village panchayats jurisdiction and finally culminates into Zuvari River at Undir.
