There are more than a thousand irrigation ponds in Kanyakumari district ... the ponds are located in Putharmandi .... hundreds of acres of land are affected ....

There are more than 1,000 irrigation ponds in Kanyakumari district which are not disturbed. Hundreds of acres are at risk of being affected by the inability to store water in these.

Kanyakumari district has 2,040 irrigation ponds under the control of the Public Works Water Resources Division. Over 20,000 acres of paddy, banana, coconut and other crops are cultivated through these. The dams and ponds in the district were flooded this year due to heavy rains in the summer. At the same time, all the ponds and canals are found in Putharmandi as no water bodies have been disturbed for the last two years.

At present, the surplus water from the Pechipparai and Perunchani dams is distributed in the irrigation canals, but the water does not reach the outlet area as all the canals are located in Putharmandi without being disturbed. Thus, farmers are disappointed.

More than 1,000 ponds in the district, including Kandanvilai, Kalpadi, Iraniyal, Villukuri, Kottaram, Karungal and Tovalai, are unidentified. Pools with a capacity of up to 20 feet in depth are found to be ineffective as they cannot hold even 5 feet of water as these are not disturbed by the public works department. Farmers are unable to use the stagnant irrigation water in ponds full of reed grass, lotus and other aquatic plants for even a month.

Thus, crops like banana, coconut and paddy, which depend on ponds, have no access to water at other times except during the rainy season. Therefore, the existing agricultural area can be sustained only if the existing irrigation ponds in Kumari district are protected. Otherwise, there is a risk that the agricultural area will shrink by a third in two or three years.

In this regard, the farmers said:

The presence of more than 3,000 ponds in Kanyakumari district is a boon to agriculture. Of this, 2,040 ponds are under the control of the Public Works Department. Doubling the yield will result in clearing the ponds annually during the summer. The water holding capacity of the pond will increase. In the past, the government allowed farmers to measure the sediment in the pond. Farmers will take soil from the ponds at their own expense. It will save the government a lot of money.

However, more than 1,000 ponds are overgrown with grass and bushes due to the lack of soil clearance and the fact that the ponds have not been disturbed for the past two years, they said.

In this regard, the Public Works Department Water Resources Division said:

For the past two summers, corona regulations have been in place, making it impossible to dig canals and ponds. Steps will be taken to maintain the irrigation ponds in the coming days, they said.