The Hindu : Tamil Nadu News : Residents want lake desilted

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Wednesday, Feb 20, 2008
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Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu

Residents want lake desilted

K.Manikandan

The waterbody once measured nearly 100 acres

— Photo: K. Manikandan

CLEANING SOUGHT: The Ranganathapuram Lake in West Tambaram.

TAMBARAM: Residents of West Tambaram want the State Government to clean up the Ranganathapuram Lake that has become a vast reservoir of water contaminated with effluents and sewage.

Also known as Kadaperi Lake and ‘potheri’, but popularly called Ranganathapuram Lake, this waterbody once measured nearly 100 acres, but now has only half of its original expanse.

Residents of Ranganathapuram said the Government classified about 30 acres of unused portion of the lake as ‘natham poramboke’ in 1978 to facilitate housing for the poor.

A considerable portion of the lake was also encroached upon over the past couple of decades, said officials of the Department of Municipal Administration and Water Supply.

Drop in water quality

Residents of eight wards of Tambaram Municipality are concerned at the deteriorating quality of water from their domestic and deep borewells as ground water recharge takes place from the lake. The amount of contamination is so much that a whiff of foul smell passes by when people travel on the lake bunds.

“The lake has not been cleaned in 12 years. Oil from the Tambaram depot of the Metropolitan Transport Corporation, effluents and sewage from market areas of West Tambaram, restaurants and other commercial establishments, apart from several houses are drained into the lake," pointed out M.K.Nagoor Kani, Councillor of Ward No. 7.

Water drawn from surface and borewells in Kasthurbai Nagar, Ranganathapuram, Kadeperi and some areas of Pulikuradu and Kannadapalayam is dark in colour and accompanied by a pungent smell, according to Mr. Kani.

Desilt lake

The water should be drained out, the lake desilted and deepened and contamination by sewage and effluents should be stopped as the waterbody was the source to recharge ground water to several thousand families, he said.

The problem of waterbodies getting contaminated by effluent discharge was not restricted to Ranganathapuram. Lorries, light commercial vehicles and three-wheelers are washed at Medavakkam Lake near Tambaram during most part of the day, resulting in oil and fuel contaminating the water. As water drawn from infiltration wells around the lake was being supplied to residents, cleaning of lorries should be stopped, residents said.

Office-bearers of the Kancheepuram District Water Bodies Exnora said agencies such as Chennai Metropolitan Water Supply and Sewerage Board and Public Works Department had prohibited even washing of clothes.

Even at a recent meeting of the voluntary organisation, held at A. J. S. Nidhi Higher Secondary School in Alandur, office-bearers welcomed the State Government’s stand on inter-linking of rivers. They suggested that the possibility of linking lakes in Tambaram Taluk be explored.

V. Kuppan, president of the district unit of Exnora, said that without losing time, the State Government should constitute a statutory committee for protecting all waterbodies.

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