Goemkarponn desk
PONDA: As Ponda City, Kavlem, and Bandora main Nullah are choked with garbage dumps, the locals in City and villages fear flooding of houses in the monsoon.
As Ponda City’s main Nullah is filled with a dump of garbage, Pondaitees fear flooding of houses in monsoon. Considering past incidents of flooding of this nullah at the time of monsoon, Locals demanded urgent desiltation and cleaning of nullah by removing garbage and silt before the onset of monsoon.
Despite the Curti Panchayat and Ponda Municipality (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 watch over them.
Damodar Naik of Ponda feared flooding of houses as the nullah basin dumped with garbage is not cleaned.
He said the Ponda, the main nullah all along the 3 km stretch, dumped with city waste including thermacol, garbage, plastic waste, and bottles besides domestic and hotel wastewater also flows into the nullah. If nullah is choked with dumped material and silt is not cleaned, repeat flooding of houses which happened in the past year.
Senior Citizen Rohidas Naik at Bandora points out that along the hundred metres stretch at Bandora, the nullah filled with plastic and trees and bushes has chalked nullah and may lead to flooding of surrounding houses.
Since the nullah has a culvert, Bandaras all along its basin many times logs of dry wood, branches traps or stuck into Bandaras, and pillar of a culvert along with garbage waste, thus leading to blocking of flow monsoon water leading to flooding of the nullah. For the past few years, the locals at Nagar, Curti have been witnessing flooding of houses due to nullah water, causing damages to a house and household goods.
The 13 km nullah originates at Bethora, where some Bethora Industrial unit releases untread water and chemical waste into the nullah.
Recently some Curti locals complained about fish dying in nullah and floating.
After originating at Bethora, the nullah flows downstream at Curti, then Ponda City, then Kavlem and Bandora Village Panchayats and finally culminates into Zuari river.