Check dam-cum-Swimming Pool (Temporary) River Kollidam

 

Check Dam-cum-Swimming Pool in River Kollidam

Understand the title – the swimming pool is within the banks of the river. It is not as if a short canal takes off from the river to fill up the off-shore swimming pool. The pool has been created within the banks of the river.

How did this come about? 

It is not a long story, but a technical one. I will try my best to make it understandable to those who are not professionals in studies of river regimes, river bank protections etc. Look at the picture below, a news item dated 2024-06-21:

One sees the water flowing smoothly (at the surface) and about 15 meter downstream of the bridge, a wall, protruding one foot above the bed level, was constructed to avoid scouring (slowly removing the soil (river bed) from around the bridge supports (piers)). As the article says, this slow moving water over the foot-high wall creates a near-stagnant lake between the bridge pier that helps reduce the rate of scouring. The construction of this wall was necessitated because about 30 km upstream of this bridge we have a weir across River Cauvery that is being repaired; all the waters upstream of the weir are directed into its tributary, River Kollidam. Otherwise, River Kollidam is more or less a dry river bed supporting small streams between not so steep banks that local people use for washing clothes, bathing and fishing too, I believe. The increased flow in this river under the recently constructed bridge, it is feared, would scour around the piers of River Kollidam bridge and may destabilize them.   

 But, leave it to the local people (who mostly live on the banks of the river) to make use of this sort of a lake-cum swimming pool to make it their playground, especially the very hot summer we are experiencing in this part of the state, Tamil Nadu.. This is what you see in the pictures given below (photographed by me and not altered in any way).

In the top figure, if you looked closely near the top, you would notice a hut - this is the "residence" of a person/family in the flood-pains of the rive.

People are enjoying their summer break using whatever facility is available to them. I also saw a woman (from a distance I could make out only because she was wearing a saree).They may or may not long for a vacation to Kodaikanal or other, fancier Hill Stations. Yet, they do know how to enjoy themselves.

Here, it is appropriate to quote someone:

‘Freedom has a thousand charms to show,

That Slaves, howe’er contented, never know

No, I am not equating those who live in the flood plains of a river or on its banks to that of slaves; yet, they do have things common with slaves. Their life, based on livelihood, is precarious, day-to-day. I know of an instance of the so-called “sand mafia” paying bullock cart owners (they somehow managed to “hoodwink” the regulators) to get sand from the bed of the same river. And, suddenly this activity - happening under the “watchful” eyes of the regulators and was allowed if not encouraged by the self-same regulators - was made a punishable offence. Here, the instability and the attendant shame.

Yet, they are enjoying their freedom, however temporary it may be – after all, when the repair work of the weir upstream is completed, River Kollidam will become a multiple shallow-water streams, and still people would enjoy the life giving aspects of those waters, diminished in quantity yet offered a brief interregnum.

Nothing to sneeze at.

Raghuram Ekambaram