CHENNAI: Standing knee-deep in the shallow waters of the Great Salt Lake, Selvi Ramesh spends hours each day feeling through the mud with her bare hands, searching for prawns and crabs. “This wetland feeds my children,” she said, during a fishermen’s protest held on Monday on the banks of the lagoon. “If this water goes, we go hungry.”
Selvi from Thiruvidanthai village, who belongs to the socio-economically backward Irular community, has three children, and, like several Irula families, depends entirely on the brackish backwaters for daily income. The proposed Kovalam-Mahabalipuram drinking water reservoir, she fears, will turn this wetland into a deep freshwater storage.
The protest, organised by fishing communities from 16 coastal villages, comes amid mounting opposition to the Water Resources Department’s plan to build the large Mamallan Reservoir across coastal wetlands between East Coast Road and Old Mahabalipuram Road. The project will submerge more than 4,300 acres of marshes, mudflats, salt pans and backwaters, including large parts of the Great Salt Lake ecosystem.
“This is not empty land. This is our workplace,” Selvi said. “We don’t have boats or big nets. We survive by collecting prawns and crabs by hand.”
From Pudu Kalpakkam, Sadayan D and Elumalai P stood near their small boats tied along the wetland edge. Both said their families were resettled earlier in 1964, when the original Kalpakkam village was cleared for setting up the nuclear power plant. “We lost our homes then. Now the government wants to take away our fishing grounds too,” Sadayan said.
“These wetlands still give us daily income,” Elumalai said. “We catch live shrimp here. Big sea fishermen buy them as bait. That money feeds our families every day.”
Naturalist M Yuvan said the Great Salt Lake is not just a livelihood zone but a critical ecological system. It has been listed by the Salim Ali Centre for Ornithology and Natural History (SACON) as one of Tamil Nadu’s 141 prioritised wetlands, while the Wildlife Institute of India has identified it as an Important Coastal and Marine Biodiversity Area. Over 200 bird species, including more than 70 migratory species, have been recorded here, with winter counts running into tens of thousands.
“This backwater is a biological powerhouse,” said TD Babu, Asia-Pacific environmental auditor and marine biologist. “You cannot recreate a backwater ecosystem elsewhere. It has tidal influence every six hours, which allows shrimp, crabs and molluscs to breed. If you convert this into a freshwater reservoir, you will kill everything.”
Babu stressed the hydrological role of the Buckingham Canal, which runs through the system. “It is not just a canal. It is a bypass that disperses excess water and prevents inundation in human settlements. Cutting off tidal flow here means only sewage will remain.”
TNIE visited the project site on Monday and observed active wetland fishing, hundreds of migratory birds, and early preparatory work for bund construction, with heavy machinery excavating wetland soil. Fishing nets lay scattered across mudflats alive with birds.
Former TN Fishermen Cooperative Federation chairman Arumugam Prabhu Das questioned the urgency of the project ahead of the Assembly election, adding that several affected gram panchayats, despite being led by the ruling party, have resisted passing any resolutions in favour of the it.
Fishermen leader K Saravanan, who filed a petition in the southern bench of National Green Tribunal challenging the CRZ clearance issued for the project, said there is no clarity on whether Water Resources Department has obtained the mandatory no-objection certificate from fisheries department before commencing the work.
When contacted, a senior WRD official said all statutory approvals have been obtained. Fisheries commissioner KV Muralidharan was not available for comments.