Killing water bodies did Chennai in: CSE
‘City could have fared better if it had protected its once abundant natural water bodies’
Hyderabad: As the world leaders are discussing the climate change in Paris, Chennai has been hit by the devastation created by climate change-induced extreme weather, observed Sunitha Narain, the director general of the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), referring to the heavy floods that sank the city.
Unregulated urbanisation, which wiped out almost all the natural water bodies, poor drainage and the unnatural freak rainfall led to the havoc in Chennai, according to the Centre for Science and Environment.
CSE director Sunitha Narain said the city could have fared better if it had protected its once abundant natural water bodies. “We have repeatedly drawn attention to the fact that our urban sprawls such as Delhi, Kolkata, Mumbai, Chennai, Srinagar have not paid adequate attention to the natural water bodies. In Chennai, each of its lakes has a natural flood discharge channel which drains the spillover.
But we have built over many of these water bodies, blocking the smooth flow of water. We have forgotten the art of drainage. We only see land for buildings, not for water,” she held.
The CSE’s research extensively published on the disappearance of water bodies in Chennai due to unthoughtful construction activity. A document of the think-tank had shown that city had over 600 water bodies in the 1980s, but according to a master plan published in 2008 only a fraction of them could be found in a healthy condition.