COIMBATORE: Volunteers of city-based NGO, 'Team Restoring Nature' are working during the weekends to ensure that Chinnavedampatti Lake is monsoon ready.
The lake that is located in Chinnavedampatti spreads over 150-acres. About 50 per cent of the area around the, Raja Vaikal channel is agricultural land.
On the other 50 percent land, gated communities, apartment complexes, homes and commercial establishments continue to mushroom.
However, the problem is not the buildings that are constructed in the area. The real problem is that the inlets to the Chinnavedampatti Lake from its primary feeder channel, Raja Vaikal, located at Kanuvai, are restricting the flow of water into the lake due to garbage being dumped into the channel. So the team of volunteers is determined to make the channel clear and clean for water passage towards Chinnavedampatti Lake.
"Priority is clearing the close to five-kilometer channel that begins at Kanuvai and ends in the Chinnavedampatti Lake before we slip into the monsoon season, so that the lake receives its share of water." V Sathish Balaji of the environmental organisation said.
In partnership with the Coimbatore City Municipal Corporation (CCMC) and for the Chinnavedampatti Lake Restoration Team another non-profit organisation, the clean-up drive continues. For the third consecutive weekend, a few volunteers of the Team Restoring Nature were involved in cleaning the channel on Sunday. "In the next couple of weekends, in association with the civic body, and a few organisations including Residents Awareness Association of Coimbatore (RAAC), the clean-up activity will continue with the help of machinery," Sathish said.
He also urged that the gated communities, individual homes and apartment complexes located around the lake to consider the option of construction of a storm-water drain in their respective premises so that during monsoons, water could be diverted through the various constructed storm-water drain channels into the Chinnavedampatti lake.
In a phased manner, volunteers of the two-and-a-half year old NGO will develop the area towards the Chinnavedampatti Lake. "We will alternatively plant flowering and native saplings around the channel and transform the landscape into a walkers path." Sathish said.
