CHENNAI: The Public Work Department’s (PWD) fresh impetus to restore Nemilichery lake has come as a relief to local resident welfare associations who had kickstarted the work in June, to improve groundwater recharge in nearby areas. The PWD has resumed removing loads of garbage laced with mud excavated from the water body. The loads are being used to fill old quarry sites near Oragadam after paying concession fees to the Department of Geology and Mines.
“We were worried that the garbage we had excavated will be washed back into the lake during the monsoon,” said V Santhanam, president of Federation of Pallavaram Resident Welfare Association, claiming that over `7 lakh collected from the public had been spent in kickstarting the restoration. A blame game between the Pallavaram Municipality and the PWD had initially stalled restoration efforts when the resident associations sought the government’s help to remove the excavated soil and garbage. The intervention of Kancheepuram District Collector P Ponniah quickly broke the gridlock and PWD began work in early July.
However, after a month of work, there was lull, arousing fears that the work wouldn’t be completed before the onset of monsoon. When Express visited the site in October, it found a considerable amount of garbage and soil left. A PWD official told Express that the remaining loads will be removed in a few days. “Arrangements have been made to remove the remaining 50 loads before the onset of the monsoon,” said an official overseeing the restoration of the lake.
During his inspection of the lake in July, the district collector had asked the Pallavaram Municipality to stop flow of sewage into the lake. The Municipality has managed to reroute one major pipeline, but two more intrusion points are yet to be plugged. “Steps are being taken to plug one other intrusion point,” said an official from the Pallavaram Municipality, explaining the third intrusion point can be plugged only if encroachments are removed.