Chennai’s waterways, 88 km within city limits, were thriving arteries of trade and transport till about 40 years ago. Today, they are garbage dumps. What can be done? GOUTAM GHOSH
Where boats once sailed: The Captain Cotton Canal
THERE was a time –— about 40 years ago –— when boats sailed on the Cooum in Chennai. Go back some more years and some of you would remember seeing Pachchaiyappa Mudaliar bathing in the Cooum before entering his college –
— a landmark institution on Poonamallee High Road.
Many fondly recall how they walked down the Buckingham Canal, the Adyar and Cooum rivers, watched children frolicking while goods-laden boats inched by. The cyclone of 1965 disfigured the rivers with an indelible coat of paint, and the waterways degenerated to what they are today –— stinking mass of black, virtually stagnant water that can brook no life. In four decades, they finally yielded to public indifference.
Forget about sitting by or walking along the three major waterways –— the 31 km city section of the 420 km Buckingham Canal running north-south (257 km in Andhra Pradesh and 163 km in Tamil Nadu); or the 65 km Cooum originating in a crystal clear village lake by the same name, meandering along its 18 km west-east city journey to join the Bay near Napier Bridge; and the Adyar river from Chembarambakkam lake, one of Chennai’s drinking water sources –— observation shows that most walk past briskly, pinching their noses till distance wanes the malodour.
Photos: Goutam Ghosh, S. Kannan
The Cooum
Though not as overwhelming as flesh putrefying under tonnes of rubble, the smell is strong –— like a hydrogen sulphide-ammonia cocktail. And when there is breeze, the pleasure is smothered by the stink. Just as one cannot keep heat out in summer, one cannot avoid the stench.
A rare resource
Chennai is fortunate. It is the world’s countable few with own waterways, measuring 88 km within city limits. Cambridge boasts of its Cam that is narrower than the Otteri Canal of Chennai, but its bed is clearly visible till it is raked by punting enthusiasts. What distinguishes them from us is our ability to keep our eyes shut as we ask ourselves “Does it affect me or my near ones? If it does not, we must ignore it.”
How else could the six waterways of Chennai –— the Adyar and Cooum rivers, the Mambalam Drain, the Buckingham Canal, and the Captain Cotton Canal in north Chennai and Otteri Canal that flow west to east and drain into the Buckingham Canal –— degenerate so sharply and quickly?
P.M. Beliappa, former chairperson, Tamil Nadu Pollution Control Board, says, “These waterways are flat with a gradient of three metres every 20 km. The catchments are studded with tanks that reduce the inflow. Not all residential areas have sewers, so there is uncontrolled yet unavoidable flow of untreated sewage into the waterways. These non-point sources add to the pollutant load. Obviously the population has grown beyond the city’s carrying capacity. The present state is because of neglect, not understanding the complexities of waterways, inadequate monitoring, insufficient investment, and improper management structure. We need a Chennai Waterways Authority to ensure optimum intervention.”
Dirk Walther, from Germany, now with the Centre for Environmental Studies, Anna University, Chennai, disagrees that the city’s exploding population caused the mess. “The number of people letting out sewage into waterways instead of routing it through sewage treatment plants (STPs) is small. The mess is because of the failure to understand a complex issue. Many agencies, each handling one aspect of a problem, cannot help,” he says.
Centralised agency
The sewage treatment plant at Kodungaiyur.
The implication is that policy makers should not ask the Chennai Corporation to take care of storm water drains, the Mambalam Drain and Captain Cotton Canal, while the Tamil Nadu Pollution Control Board monitors the pollution levels, the Chennai Metropolitan Water Supply and Sewerage Board (aka Metrowater) the sewer lines and domestic waste water and the Public Works Department (PWD) the other waterways. The focus should be water flowing into and conveyed by these waterways, no matter what the source. The much-needed central authority should understand what is at stake (the possible impact of each action) and how best (minimum money, man-power and time) to make the waterways usable, if not restoring their former glory.
Despite Shiv Das Meena, chairperson, Metrowater, insisting that STP-processed water alone flows into the waterways, there is more than treated water, no matter what the source. If it were only treated sewage, there would not be a massive layer as bed. Solid particles and sludge are raising the bed, again no matter what their source. There are 314 outflows into the city’s waterways, and uncountable non-point polluting sources. This correspondent photographed and reported instances of tankers emptying raw sewage into the Cooum.
Recently the State PWD Minister Durai Murugan wanted Rs.17.45 crores to desilt the Cooum river from Chintadripet to Koyembedu Bridge (16 km), and said most waterways had already been desilted. Environmentalists and ecologists are perturbed, and skeptic.
In the first place, despite the stench, the soft bed is likely to have species, some endemic, that would disappear if dredged.
Secondly, as Walther said, any encroachment narrows the effective cross-section area and the same volume of flowing water would need a greater height to pass through, spilling water over the edges. This happened during the last heavy rainfall. For instance, people had to be evacuated from Mogappair Eri Scheme after water spilt into the low lying area.
Thirdly, what tidal action failed to do, the tsunami did. It removed the sandbars blocking the waterways. With the dredged river bed lower relative to the sea level, the tides will flush the downward flow back upstream. So except showing that the money has been spent, which may benefit those keen on the process, dredging hardly offers a long-term solution.
Money down the drain
Finally, if the sludge were dumped on the banks, the next rains would wash it back. When the Hooghly river through Kolkata was dredged in the late 1950s, the pumped silt filled up Salt Lake that became Salt Lake City. The economics of the Chennai City River Conservation Project is simple: spend to dig a pit, fill it up and dig it again.
The Chennai City River Conservation Project (2001), with partial Central funding under the National River Conservation Project, has one aim –— to restore the rivers and waterways. In 1988-1990 Severn Trend, U.K., with Overseas Development Agency funds, studied the waterways but their suggestions were never implemented, says Beliappa. Between 2001-2006, the waterways were studied again and all the agencies, including Anna University, met in November 2006, offering a solution hardly different from Severn Trend’s 17 years ago.
Threat of pollutants
The fact is, “Persistent organic pollutants found in the waterways are capable of long range transport, can accumulate in human and animal tissue, magnify in food chains and have significant impact on human health and environment,” states the report, “Chennai Waterways: Past, Present and Future” (CWPPF).
Water samples are analysed for quality –— a must. But sediment analysis is optional, and analysis of suspended particles is not considered at all. In Germany, the German Detergent Law of 1965 requires biodegradability of 80 per cent by weight of detergents flowing into waterways. There is nothing so stringent in India. Our national policy is to classify water by use, not worry about its baseline quality.
As Ing Olbrisch states in his paper –— “European Experiences and Best Practice in the Management of European Waterways”, published in CWPPF –— “Many production processes are shifted to other countries, mostly developing countries. This is based not only on economics but also the decreasing acceptance of environmental pollution in industrialised countries”, because policy makers and people in developing countries like India are unaware of or indifferent to long-term benefits and costs. They cannot see beyond the tips of their noses.
Dysfunctional infrastructure
How else can 267 million litres of sewage be discharged into the waterways because STPs don’t work? A visit to the Kodungaiyur STP showed only two functional aeration ponds. Chennai also generates 1,400 tonnes of solid waste a day, a lot of it dumped in waterways.
If it is agreed that all agencies do their best, how can garbage be in waterways? If you insist that Government agencies cannot take care of all ills, there should be no opposition to a system of penalty and reward. Just as public areas are under surveillance cameras in London, Chennai too can install such a system to penalise violators heavily, quickly. People walk across their homes and fling garbage bags into waterways. This must be stopped, no matter how bitter it may seem to the denizens of Chennai.
How would restored waterways help? According to an Asian Development Bank (ADB) report, the capital cost of developing inland waterways is about 5-10 per cent that of a four-lane expressway or railway. Maintenance cost is around 10 per cent that of roads. And one litre of fuel can move 24 tonne-km of freight by road, 85 tonne-km by rail and 105 tonne-km by inland water transport (IWT). Therefore, according to the ADB, shifting one billion tonne-km to IWT will reduce transport fuel cost by $5 millions and overall transport cost by $9 millions. In 2000, IWT moved 1.5 billion tonne-km out of a total cargo traffic of 1,000 billion tonne-km in India –— a share of 0.15 per cent. Lack of storage facilities is stated to be a cause, but if it can be provided for railways, so can it be for IWT.
Need to act fast
The World Conservation Union (IUCN) of Switzerland, in its treatise “Pay”, states that the pricing of IWT should be based on non-use value (existence value and bequest value) and use value. The benefit streams need to be seen against drastic weather changes and likely pressure on land and water resources. Whatever needs to be done is better done quickly. After all, as someone said, “We have not inherited the earth from our forefathers but have borrowed it from our grandchildren.”
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