CHENNAI: In a bid to prevent trash from entering the City’s waterways, the Chennai Corporation has begun installing trash traps at the outfalls of storm water drains. The civic body has proposed to fit all 825 outfalls with these traps within a year’s time.
These trash traps have crisscrossing iron rods to stop large debris and finer mesh to filter smaller trash. The traps have a metal door on top to provide easy access to workers to remove the trash that has been collected.
“Many first-world countries use mesh bags to filter the trash from their drains. But after studying the magnitude of trash that is dumped into storm water drains in Chennai, we realised the mesh bags could not be used here, so we chose openable trash traps,” said a senior corporation official.
Currently, the Corporation has installed these traps in two locations and has started work in 23 other locations. “The two major waterways that pass through the city are the Adyar and Cooum Rivers so we are installing trash traps in the 150 storm water drains that empty into them on a priority basis,” the official said, explaining that National Green Tribunal has been insisting on such mechanisms to stop pollution of waterways.
These trash traps will supplement the eight trash booms installed on the Cooum which is estimated to have stopped around 23,000 tonnes of waste and hyacinth from flowing into Bay of Bengal. “By stopping the trash in the drains itself, we’ll be able to reduce pollution of the Rivers,” said another official.