ALAPPUZHA: Sixteen groynes (Pulimuttu) the irrigation department laid in Purakkad Panchayat spending Rs 12 crore have gone waste. The rough sea is washing away the groynes constructed with hard-rock pebbles of 10 to 20 metres long without connecting to the basement of the existing seawall. The department selected Ambalappuzha-Thottappally coastal stretch for laying it two years ago to combat heavy sand erosion during high and low tides there.
Disappointed by their sorry state, residents now demand probe into the unscientific method adopted resulting in the criminal wastage of money. If the present situation continues, Purakkad Panchayat of 27,912 people, largely fisherfolks, will be facing a grim future. Former panchayat president V.C. Madhu said the authorities laid the rock pieces in the sea refusing to heed them when they requested engineers to build it from the seawall base.
"They laid it some metres away from the wall base. As we professed, after two years, the groynes are being overpowered by sea waves," he said. "Many coconut palms have now got uprooted, and lands vanished. They could have done it in a scientific way." Though the seawall along Thottappally, Payalkulangara, Purakad, Punthala, Pazhavagadi and Anantheswaram still exists, the sea remains unpredictable.
For last some years, precisely since the Indian Rare Earths Limited (IRE) began dredging in 2012, the intensity of sea attacks has increased. Data available with Purakad Panchayat shows eight families lost houses in 2013 and 11 in 2014. But 39 families were left homeless last year, and it has already touched 22 this year.
