Chennai to be world’s largest desalination hub

Chennai: When all the proposed desalination projects aimed at providing drinking water to the people became operational, Chennai would be the world’s largest hub for desalination with the capacity to produce 750 million litres of drinking water every day, Chief Minister M K Stalin said on Saturday.

Speaking after the inauguration of the new 150 million litre desalination plant at Nemili, along with 96 other completed projects valued at Rs 2465 crore, and laying the foundation for 39 schemes costing Rs 1806.36 crore, Stalin said his government was launching drinking water schemes at a cost of Rs 100 crore, despite the financial constraints of the State, because it understood the importance of water.

Realizing the burgeoning population in Chennai, the first desalination plant was started at Minjur in 2007, during his tenure as State Minister for Municipal Administration from 2006 to 2011, and it was inaugurated by the then Chief Minister M Karunanidhi in 2010, to supply drinking water to 10 lakh families in North Chennai, he said.

Then in 2010, the foundation was laid for the first plant at Nemili, which catered to the drinking water needs of nine lakh people in South Chennai, and it also led to the laying of foundation for Asia’s biggest desalination plant at Perur in August, 2023, which would become operational soon, he said.

The DMK had a major role in developing Chennai and he himself had been the elected Mayor of the city twice, he said. A plethora of developmental projects had been implemented by the DMK governments for Chennai and most of the flyovers that one might see now were constructed by those governments, he said.

Now the government was keen on providing water to the people and hence the plant with a capacity to produce 150 million litres of water that was inaugurated on Saturday to meet the water demands of nine lakh people in Velachery, Alandur, St Thomas Mount, Medavakkam, Kovilambakkam, Nanmangalam, Keelkattalai, Moovarasmpettai, Sholinganallur, Ullagaram, Puzhuthivakkam, Madipakkam, Pallavaram and the IT corridor on OMR.

Among the other 52 projects worth Rs 172 crore that he declared open were three drinking water systems, while a scheme to reclaim the land at the Kodungaiyur garbage dumping yard through a process of bio-mining at a cost of Rs 648.38 crore was among the 39 new schemes worth Rs 1806.36 crore for which the foundation was laid.

Responding to a request from a Minister to name the building that was coming up near Chennai Corporation after M Karunanidhi in his centenary year, Stalin said it would be called ‘Kalainagar Centenary Building.’