BENAULIM: Every monsoon, the Khareband-Benaulim stretch is inundated with water that spills onto the road, and the entire area is virtually cordoned off due to this man-made problem. Water even finds its way into houses in the area, leading to the disaster management squad having to evacuate the residents every year.
Not only are the locals unable to access other parts of Goa, but students and office-goers, who need to take this route to work are inconvenienced as the other available routes get overburdened with traffic; traffic congestions are common during the monsoons.
“In my younger days, it would rain continuously for 10 to 12 days. The Sal River would get swollen. The catchment areas, where we cultivated our paddy fields, would get inundated with rainwater, but would drain off in a matter of two days. We could manage to cultivate two crops, ‘sorod’ and ‘vaigonn’, without much damage to the crops. Now, with the area getting flooded with just two days of continuous rainfall, we have to be content with just one crop of ‘vaigonn’,” said Pedro Fernandes, a farmer who has a paddy field near the Khareband Bridge.
He added, “The outlets connecting the River Sal, which would drain the storm water, have been partially blocked. The catchment area, which would hold lakhs of litres of rainwater, has been filled, and we farmers and the general public have to bear the brunt of the rainfall, which is meagre compared to earlier times.”
The root cause of this is the reclamation or filling-up of the low-lying area adjacent to the River Sal, at the outskirts of Margao, which divides Margao from the coastal village of Benaulim.
Miguel Fernandes, a farmer who cultivates a paddy field in the area, reasoned that the cause of floods at the Khareband/Tolleabandh area goes beyond the reclamation of the Khareband catchment area, but the entire catchment areas along the banks of the River Sal are getting reclaimed by the real estate lobby.
“The river now getting desilted is not going to solve the problem. What is required is that the filling up of low-lying areas along the riverbank has to stop,” he said.
Hansel Vaz, a resident who gets affected by the floods, felt that the problem is that no one was looking at the issue holistically. He said, “The river should not be treated like a nullah, and so dredging a deeper channel makes little sense. The area around the river acts like a catchment for rain water runoff. This is what should be protected from land filling. The new highway is right through this, besides the many housing complexes all in the catchment. If the water has no place to go, then it will flood. Man cannot control nature, but we have to learn to live with it.”
Concurring with Hansel about the Western Bypass were Benaulim gram sabha members, who had highlighted their concerns at the last gram sabha and expressed fears about the implications of filling up low-lying areas to facilitate construction of the highway. They said that this would adversely affect all the villages along the River Sal.
“The entire village, along with the surrounding villages, will be submerged with storm water. Besides the water entering the households, there will be disease due to the storm water getting stagnated,” said Benaulim villagers at the last gram sabha.
“The filling up of catchment areas along the riverbank has already caused havoc; with Benaulim getting flooded every monsoon. This should be finalized only after taking the stakeholders on board. The Western Bypass in its present form will spell doomsday,” said Rudolf Barreto.
Sarpanch Remedious Fernandes echoed the sentiments of the villagers and said the panchayat is with the people of Benaulim. He said that the panchayat had already submitted representations of the villagers to the District Collector on the Western Bypass after passing a panchayat resolution on the matter.
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