The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Chennai News : Ambitious river clean-up drive `a white elephant'

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Nov 24, 2006
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Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu - Chennai

Ambitious river clean-up drive `a white elephant'

Vani Doraisamy

Anna Varsity study shows main waterways still heavily polluted

CHENNAI : The Chennai City River Conservation Programme is proving to be a white elephant with the city's main waterways still heavily polluted, a new study by Anna University shows.

Ekkatuthangal and Jafferkhanpet have emerged as typical urban pollution hotspots due to high pollution loads in the Adyar river.

The findings of a study monitoring the city's main waterways by the varsity's Institute for Ocean Management and Centre for Environmental Studies, released on Thursday, show that despite the ambitious clean-up efforts, the Adyar and Cooum rivers, the Buckingham Canal and the Otteri nullah have more-than-permissible levels of biological oxygen on demand (BOD), chemical oxygen on demand (COD) and organic nitrogen -- all of which are pollution load indicators.

The study was funded by the Ministry of Environments and Forests. The State Department of Environment is co-ordinating the Rs 1,200 crore CCRCP.

The sampling was done in 24 stations along the four waterways, the Mambalam drain and the Captain Cotton Canal and in the four sewage treatment plants in Koyambedu, Kodungaiyur, Nesapakkam and Perungudi.

"High BOD/COD levels were recorded at Ekkatuthangal and Jafferkhanpet. The Buckingham canal at Mylapore and the Mambalam drain were found to be more polluted than the Adyar river, due to insufficient freshwater flow and domestic waste discharge,'' says R. Ramesh, Director, Institute of Ocean Management.

Concentrations of toxic metals and pesticides were, however, found to be within permissible limits.

The Adyar had another dubious distinction: its potential for emitting methane--a greenhouse gas-- was found to be the highest among that of other major world rivers such as the Amazon, Hudson, Rhine, Thames and McKenzie.

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