A Bridge Over Troubled Waters
As bridges go, this short one over the Terekhol river that will connect
Arosbagh hamlet to Banda town in south Maharashtra is being very inefficiently
built. There’s heavy machinery digging
up a new road from the hamlet to the bridge and from the bridge to the nearest
road to Banda. All the soil excavated –
red, fertile, lateritic material – has been dumped into the river. The resultant bund has blocked the river’s
flow to a little channel over which a temporary foot bridge has been installed. I am assured by the locals that the bund itself
is temporary too and that, once the bridge is done, it will be removed and the
river will flow freely again.
“Where will you take all this immense amount of mud to?” I ask
The Project Assistant has no answer.
“Then why did you dump all of it in the river in the first place?”
“Because nobody knew what to do with all this
mud.” It is an incompetent answer and I
walk away unconvinced. The construction of the concrete bridge is only
beginning and will take another five months to complete.
Arosbagh is a pretty hamlet, and is perched at a defining point along
the Terekhol river in Maharashtra, for at this point the river becomes the
dividing line between Maharashtra and Goa.
About twenty five kilometres downstream is the estuary, where Terekhol
meets the Arabian Sea.
As I stand there, I am deeply troubled; it isn’t the bridge’s
construction alone, it’s the awful impact that sand mining in this stretch of
the river has had: impact on the river,
the lands on either side, agriculture and people’s futures.
Years of illegal mining of sand from the banks have made them steep and prone to erosion in the heavy monsoons of the Konkan. During the rains, as the raging river pounds these now-fragile banks, the collapse of land – and coconut trees, as seen in the picture – has been regular and devastating and seems inevitable in the near future too. The many farmers I met during a walk around Arosbagh, spoke of losing land to the river. As the banks collapse, the width of the river increases year after year, and brings new stretches of land into the danger zone.
Sand is not the main thing. Sand is the only thing.
Sand is the hidden force in a river. It is the soil of the river. It provides and sustains virtually all
life that exists in the river.
Along with another very important mineral, gravel, it forms part of the
hyporheic zone, an intermediate zone between the surface water of the river and
the groundwater beneath, which recharges the ground water table far beyond the
river basin itself, by slowing down the flow of water in the river and allowing
for percolation, not just downwards but laterally across large areas on either
side of the river as well.
As the sand miners toiled away at their extraction, the Terekhol’s water
level dropped, as did the level of water in the aquifer and the open wells. I saw a beautiful community well that, I was
told, had water at five feet below the surface only a few years ago. Today, the water level is so low down that
most of those who live around the well have installed submersible pumps in it. “This well has never let us down,” says a
villager, and then adds with a touch of pride, “Even though the water level is
just a couple of feet from the bottom, there’s always water. We can rely of this.”
I am not so sanguine, for we cannot cheat science.
Most of the men controlling the sand mining are apparently from the Goa
side. I met two young men who fought
these sand miners through the panchayat and with community support and their
story is worth telling: when nothing seemed to stop the sand mining permanently,
they got the police in. The sand pans
were confiscated and cases filed against the culprits. To show the police the stretches that had
been destroyed by mining, the young men took them in a boat down the
river. While in mid-stream, they saw a
number of sand miners standing by the river bank. These men began pelting stones at them, their intent was clear and dangerous. Those in the boat were forced to jump into
the river and swim to the opposite side, save one who swam to the bank were the
miners stood. They promptly took him
hostage and asked for the release of their sand pans and withdrawal of cases in
return. Thankfully, the situation
de-escalated in a day, but the scars of the incident run deep.
The men from Goa controlling the sand mining business are nasty, determined,
and entirely uncaring of the consequences of their illegal work on this
beautiful river. Yet, this incident
seems to have got Arosbagh hamlet together to take a stand against the
immediate threat to their livelihood and install a vigilance system. The result: the sand mining – though it takes
place at night on occasion – has reduced significantly.
“Sir, we are facing the problem of sea water incursion now. At high tide, twice a day, the water level
rises as sea water comes up the river. We
never ever had jelly fish in our river earlier, today we do. This salinity has
destroyed our agriculture; there is no cultivation in paddies now. Is this
global warming?”
No, not really. This is the result of sand mining as well, surprising as it
might seem. The reasoning is evident: as mining emptied out the hyporheic zone, all the way from Banda to the
coast, and lowered the water table, high-tide water moved in further and
further. This salinity – and the removal
of sand (in which many species of fish lay their eggs) – has destroyed the
native riverine fishery and brought in exotics.
Paddies, coconuts, fisheries, areca – livelihoods destroyed.
Drinking water in grave danger.
Is there the possibility of redemption?
Sadly, not in the near future. It
will takes decades for the sand banks to stabilise and recover, during which
Arosbagh will experience the distress and migration.
And of this bridge over troubled waters?
If not grouted firmly inland, its banks could
give way too and the bridge could be history.
Perhaps the engineers have it figured out, yet, as I walk away from
Arosbagh on that sultry February evening, I am not optimistic.