The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Chennai News : Citizens’ forum pinpoints some chinks in the CCRCP armour

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Monday, Apr 21, 2008
ePaper | Mobile/PDA Version

Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu - Chennai

Citizens’ forum pinpoints some chinks in the CCRCP armour

Staff Reporter

CHENNAI: A meeting to discuss the shortcomings of the Chennai City River Conservation Project (CCRCP), a project conceived to protect the city waterways from pollution, was held in the city on Sunday. It was organised by the Citizens Guardians, a registered citizens’ forum.

Chairman of the forum V. Ravichandran, said that even after completion of the project, executed at the cost of more than Rs. 1,200 crore, there had been recurrent sewage overflows and caving in of manholes in different parts of the city. He cited the collapse of the sewerage system on the Anna Main Road in K.K. Nagar and caving in of manholes in Mylapore, K.K. Nagar, T. Nagar and Ashok Nagar as examples.

Mr. Ravichandran alleged that after the execution of the project, the number of sewage outfalls in waterways had only doubled. Having installed big sewage pipelines , there seemed to be no mechanism to examine the efficiency of the sewage outflow. A calamity is waiting to happen in the form of sewage leaks leading to contamination of ground water, he added.

Velachery woes

S. Kumararaja, secretary, Federation of Velachery Residents’ Welfare Association, who spoke at the meeting, said that despite modernising sewage treatment plants and increasing the capacity of numerous sewage pumping stations, the residents of many localities in Velachery were faced with overflowing sewage and stagnation of sewage-mixed-rainwater during the monsoon.

Mr. Kumararaja said the main problem that led to sewage overflow was that the sewage pumping station on Taramani Link Road suffered from inadequate pumping capacity.

Sewage from various parts of Velachery got collected at the pumping station on Taramani Link Road, which is pumped to the L.B. Road pumping station, from where the sewage is pumped to the Perungudi Sewage Treatment Plant.

Chennai Metrowater has not been able to undertake any expansion work at the pumping station on the Taramani Link Road, as it lacks space. Also, the proposal of conveying sewage through gravity flow from the Madhya Kailash junction to the Perungudi treatment plant has been left incomplete as the L.B. Road pumping station has not been modernised.

The delay in modernising the L.B. Road pumping station has resulted in the frequent shutting down of the pumping station at Taramani Link Road leading to the sewage overflow.

Printer friendly page
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Tamil Nadu