CHENNAI: Around 400 residents of Porur and activists from Arappor Iyakkam carrying placards formed a human chain from Porur signal to Iyyappanthangal signal along the bank of the Porur lake on Sunday.
Arappor Iyakkam’s social audit of this potable water body highlighted some troubling truths. The lake is currently split by a mud road running parallel to the Chennai Bypass overhead. This mud road built before the 2015 floods to allow lorries, JCBs and tractors to enter for desilting the lake has considerably reduced the lake’s capacity.
The protesters alleged that the selective desilting of the lake in 2015 proved futile and water overflowed onto the roads during the floods. “Selective desilting of sand, which fetches money will ruin the lake in the long run,” says Haris Sultan, an activist with Arappor Iyakkam.
Immediate removal of this mud road and the advertising hoardings in the lake is one of the key demands made by the social audit. Encroachments line most of the city’s lakes but in Porur lake it cannot be identified because there is no demarcation of the outline of the lake.
While one side of the lake has a bank, the other side ends near apartment complexes that have come up.
Protesters also demanded that the inlet and outlet canals of the lake had to be renovated. They also claimed that raw drainage entered the Thanthai canal, which fed the lake with excess water from Chembarambakkam.
The social audit also showed that the natural 10-foot-wide outlet, which carried excess water from Porur lake dissipated into a two-foot stream and was incapable of draining out excess water. This means if Chennai was cursed with a repeat of the 2015 deluge, Porur would be inundated again.
Arappor Iyakkam claimed that the petitions with their demands were acknowledged by the Public Works Department but no action was taken. An RTI application on the status of the petition remained unanswered. The protesters also demanded special security squads involving the public and government officials to save water bodies.