Water bodies controlled by too many authorities in Tamil Nadu

Chennai: With Tamil Nadu being a textbook example of what a state goes through if water is not conserved properly (through the years), what do we focus on this World Water Day?

Despite abundant water bodies, the residents still end up with parched throats, every year. With summer set to kick in shortly, water conservation activists “yet again” talk about the importance of water bodies and lack of co-ordination in the department.

Plenty are the number of water bodies. Ironically, plenty are the number of departments maintaining them. While Greater Chennai Corporation (GCC) looks after ponds in the city, Public Works Department (PWD) controls lakes, Metro Water is in charge for water bodies that provide drinking water and the departments also work in co-ordination with “several” other departments to maintain water bodies and marshlands. Years have passed by, there still no single agency in Chennai, which oversees complete water in Tamil Nadu.

What issue arises due to this? “To desilt lakes that have water, there is separate equipment (which floats on water and can desilt) and this is with GCC. But PWD maintains lakes. It costs NGOs desilting lakes at least '10 to 20 crore to buy the equipment-the reason why desilting is done with JCBs when the lakes are dry,” said a member of a top NGO working towards water conservation, on condition of anonymity.

But activists rue that the authorities often neglect other lakes and divert all the funds for desilting a handful of them. Subrramani, founder of Sabari Green Foundation, NGO for rejuvenation of water bodies,  said there are nearly 3000 waterbodies in Chennai Metropolitan Area (CMA).

“For the past 20 years, 90 per cent of the water bodies have not been desilted, though the government has been allotting crores. This is being used to rejuvenate only few lakes. In the last year, almost '200 crore was allotted for Porur lake, nearly '42 crore for Chetpet lake and more than a whopping '800 crore for a reservoir at Thervoy Kandigai.” Equally important is the preservation of locally available water. CMA has 4200 tanks and the city has an average rainfall of 140 cm.

“With such heavy rainfall, if water is stored, there is no need of desalination of sea water to meet the water requirements of the city.  We have enough rainfall and reservoirs to store the water, but we need to conserve the locally available water. Metro water supplies about 500, 550 mld of water, but sewage generation is 700-800 mld. Instead of wasting the water, we can as well treat and recycle it.  Moreover it is a cheaper option.

There is a need of flood and drought management to save people from both. Water from 2015 floods could have been utilized in the 2016 drought,” said S. Janakarajan, president, south Asia consortium of interdisciplinary water resources.