The river flowing past the town is encroached, polluted, silted, eutrophicated with poor tidal flushing, and appears almost dead, and with it, the town’s future may be too
Mapusa, having 55,000 residents, the third wealthiest town in Goa by commercial volume and GST contributions, is today a cautionary tale in urban collapse. Once nourished by its ancient drainage networks and the Mapusa River — a tributary of the Mandovi — the town now reels under routine floods, garbage-choked drains, and a crippled public infrastructure.
The warnings were long visible. They now roar with every monsoon deluge. The river flowing past Mapusa is encroached, polluted, silted, eutrophicated with poor tidal flushing and appears almost dead. And with it, the town’s future may be too. On May 20, 2025, Mapusa recorded over 150 mm of rainfall in a single day. Streets turned to streams. Shops were flooded. Homes in Tar, Khorlim, near market and Duler were inundated. Scooter riders were filmed being swept away in currents. Market areas stood ankle to waist-deep in brown, stinking water. Not a single emergency pump was deployed in time. Desilting had clearly not been done. This wasn’t weather; this was willful failure. And yet, these are just symptoms. The root cause lies deeper — in ecological amnesia and administrative apathy.
Mapusa sits atop a hillock 97 metres above sea level. It receives over 100 billion litres of rainfall every monsoon. For millennia, this rainwater flowed down ancient paleo-channels, drained into low-lying floodplains, and eventually flushed into the Mapusa River. These paleo-channels — natural watercourses aged between 7,000 to 20,000 years — were part of a composite river system that once included the Baga and Arpora rivers. This system evolved when sea levels were far higher, and Goan settlements adapted around it. That finely balanced system has now been erased — one drain, one creek, one embankment at a time.
Two key rivulets — one from the Parra hillock, another from the Khorlim watershed — once merged near the Bodgeshwar temple, forming a serpentine creek that flowed into the Mapusa River. Today, both are on the verge of extinction. The land they drained has been built over, narrowed, and filled. The creek behind the Mapusa market — the last open water corridor for storm runoff — is now a reclamation zone, eyed by developers. The mangroves that once served as natural buffers between the market and the Mapusa estuary are dying. This destruction is not speculative. It has been documented officially. The Detailed Project Report (DPR) for the Mapusa-Moira River (NW-71) (check https://tinyurl.com/2k3eeyxn), commissioned by the Inland Waterways Authority of India (IWAI) and prepared by Tractebel Engineering Pvt. Ltd., outlines in no uncertain terms the degraded condition of the river and the severe constraints in making it navigable up to Mapusa town.
The report notes that although the waterway is technically 27.1 km long and has been declared a National Waterway, its upper stretches near Mapusa are choked with silt, blocked by low-clearance bridges, and surrounded by unregulated urban sprawl. No cargo movement is currently possible. The tidal inflow is weakened. Paleo-channels are either encroached or lost entirely. The DPR further notes that navigation and fairway development beyond Chainage 17 km (near Sirsaim) is not recommended due to lack of adequate depth, ecological fragility, and urban blockages. This means the Mapusa end of the river, once the lifeline of the town, has now become a cul-de-sac of ecological dysfunction.
Any terminal proposed near Mapusa will require major investment in dredging, embankment stabilisation, and pollution control — none of which are presently allocated. Contrast this with Panaji. While Panaji has received hundreds of crores under the Smart City Mission, with underground drainage, embankments, pedestrianised riverfronts, and pumping infrastructure, Mapusa remains starved of state or central funds. The Mapusa Municipal Council (MMC) — despite governing one of the richest towns in Bardez — is forced to beg for basic desilting budgets. It has no capacity to handle the upstream stormwater volumes, let alone undertake ecological restoration. And the results are devastating.
In Shantinagar, Khorlim — a locality above the flood zone — residents went eight days without drinking water this May due to a pipeline blockage. This, while the rest of Mapusa was underwater. Elsewhere, commuters waded through knee-deep sewage-mixed stormwater. Shopkeepers in the market area estimate losses in lakhs every monsoon. The DPR makes another chilling point: unless the upper catchment, seasonal creeks, and natural drainage lines are restored, dredging alone will not suffice. Without tidal flushing, the river will turn into a eutrophic swamp, inviting disease and collapse.
It also warns of sedimentation due to upstream solid waste, unchecked real estate activity, and lack of coordination between departments. Mapusa’s decay is not just a civic problem — it is a hydrological tragedy engineered by short-term vision, corrupt land conversion, and policy neglect. No development project — not even an inland waterway — can succeed when the very river is dying upstream. Because when a town destroys its rivers, it destroys its soul. When it forgets its paleo-channels, it forgets its past. And when it builds on its floodplains, it buries its future. The river remembers. The soil remembers. The sea will remember. What Mapusa refuses to remember is this: there is no future without the river.
(Dr Nandkumar M Kamat, who has a doctorate in microbiology, is a scientist and science writer)
