Ernavur's pleas go down drain

Chennai: On Ernavur’s Makaliamman Koil street, septuagenarian K.P. Lakshmanan takes a casual stroll and sits on the ‘thinnai’ (pial) constructed by the Greater Chennai Corporation for a chat with his neighbours.

The ‘thinnai’ is a stormwater drain and standing nearly two feet high offers comfortable seating for locals to take in the pleasant evening.

Ernavur, in Tiruvotriyur zone, falls under the extended limits of what is now called the Greater Chennai Corporation. Yet, just like most of the expanded areas, faulty engineering and planning have robbed the residents of their most basic needs. Drinking water, for instance, is hard to come by for residents.

DC had earlier reported that the residents have had to plug into the Ennore Thermal Power Station water mains illegally to fulfill their needs.

K. Mallika, a resident of Eraneeswaran Koil Street, said that water is available once in four days.

“I barely get two pots of water for cooking and drinking and because the water pressure is so low, it takes nearly 20 minutes to fill up one,” she said.

Interestingly, the AIADMK MLA from Tiruvotriyur constituency, K. Kuppan, had inaugurated public fountains in the locality in September 2015, said residents.
“Water came through those pipes for 10 minutes on that day. Would you believe that metro water engineers told us the water lines were still being trialled when in November 2015 we complained of no water. How come the MLA inaugurated it then?” asked Purushothaman, another resident.

When contacted, Kuppan was oblivious to the situation but said that he will “enquire with the authorities concerned”.

Though in a statement on Monday, the Chennai Metro Water Supply and Sewerages Board maintained that the residents are getting “sufficient water at present”, the board’s Tiruvotriyur zone area engineer told DC that he will ask a team “to analyse the water situation in the area.”

While metro water may yet assess the facts behind the situation, it was not the same case with the Greater Chennai Corporation, who were content apportioning the blame on the locals for the way the storm drain turned out to be.

“It was the locals who pushed us to construct the stormwater drain. We told them, and in fact we tried to stop work even, when we came to know that the drain height will rise but it was to no avail. We received written representations from them asking to lay the drain and so we did,” said a corporation official.

Lakshmanan ponders whether it was also the locals who advised the corporation to reverse the flow of septage in the ditch, when they laid the drain replacing it.
“Earlier, it (septage) used to run along what is now the land acquired for the ETPS expansion project. It would have been much easier to build a drain that connected to Buckingham canal nearby. Now, we are left with a drain that will not save us during flood but will definitely help the mosquitoes breed,” said Senthil Kumar, a resident.