Rejuvenation of Alappuzha’s Canal Network

Traditionally, local populations maintained and nurtured water bodies including wells, ponds, lakes, canals as they played significant roles in their daily lives.  However, over the last several decades, with the over dependence and often unrealistic expectations that the Governments are custodians of public infrastructure, water bodies like most other invaluable natural resources, have most often become merely a sink for solid waste and wastewater. It is increasingly evident that in the medium to long term, failure to nurture and rejuvenate the water bodies will have dire implications on human health and sustenance.

Holistic waterbody rejuvenation efforts have to be looked at as not just technological interventions, but also focus on the pride in ownership of the commons, sustenance of economic activities dependent on the waterbody and social and cultural stewardship of water bodies by community at large.

Inspiration along with IIT Mumbai, KILA and CDD Society of India with support from Costford, Suchitwa Mission and Irrigation Department, had such an opportunity to work on the Rejuvenation of Canal Network of Alappuzha which explored to demonstrate an ecological (low energy, natural systems based) and decentralised approach (household, community and sub-canal scales) to restoration and rejuvenation of the canals systems, through an integrated intervention model (technical / infrastructure solutions, citizen involvement in the sustenance of solutions, continuous improvement model) that is both robust and cost effective. 

In late 2017, on advice of the State leadership, the team sat together and drew up a vision to rejuvenate Alappuzha’s life line…a vision to

• Clean and rejuvenate its 14 Canal sheds

• Set in position liquid and solid waste treatment systems for over 40000 households and buildings

• Create over 10 km of green pedestrian walkways bringing back vibrant life on the waters edge

• Move towards efficient water transport network

In the process create several thousand green jobs for a range of skilled as well as unskilled labour.

The approach focused on decentralised, at source treatment of the pollution, with active participation from the community.

These included:

1. Cleaning of the canal, cleaning and desilting of the canal and providing screens/ trash racks at regular intervals within the canal. The screens are a combination of vertical and horizontal screens installed at every 200-250 m along the drain as well at points where cross drains meet the main drain. The screens also help as a tool to define local Canal Committees who are the custodians of their respective stretches.

2. Identifying drainage hot spots:  Since the canals are primarily the storm water drainage channels, drainage hot spots were identified and assessed and resolved to the extent possible during the Pilot phase. 

3. Identifying and providing on site solutions for Public Liquid waste Hot spots within the canal shed – In the Pilot project, this included providing total sanitation and waste water management for the Municipal Colony – a community of 51 economically weak households. 

4. Hot spots in Private Sector (discharging more than 10 m3 waste water per day) were urged in association with KSPCB to set up their own treatment systems and let off treated water only as per discharge norms.

5. The present Solid waste management was attempted to be further fine-tuned.  Biodegradables are treated at source through composting; non-biodegradables collected at community level to discourage dumping into the canals.

6. The canal banks were cleaned and made attractive and accessible as green walkways with good lighting, paving, dust bins and motivational graffiti.

7. With the above interventions at source, the quality of water in the sub canal has improved considerably where it discharges into the main canal. Here it is proposed as part of Phase 2 to have constructed wetlands, phytorids and floating wetlands to further improve its quality.

8. The awareness campaign ‘Thodu Odayalla’ (Canals are not Drains) initiated by the local youth to raise awareness and garner public participation was a major partner for the Project to help instill confidence and enthusiasm within the community.

9. The Canal committees were constituted and for the 1st one year after commissioning of the project, the community representatives were trained and equipped for maintenance of the systems.

10. May 2018 saw over 300 students from all over the Country attending the Summer School organized by IIT Bombay and KILA which focused on a unique participative documentation and discussions on the challenges of scaling up from the Pilot Phase to City wide implementation.

Pioneering such a decentralized participative approach, Alappuzha Municipal Corporation has been awarded the Swach Sarvekshan National Award for Innovative Best Practices initiated by Small Cities in 2020.

PROJECT DATA

Scope: Design and Project Management

Location: Alappuzha, Kerala

Timeline: 2018-19

Client: Alappuzha Muncipality

Collaborators: CDD Society of India, CANALPY, KILA, IIT Mumbai