CHENNAI: While cyclone Montha may have spared Chennai from its fury, the rough seas and heavy inflow through the Adyar river have unleashed another kind of disaster — tonnes of plastic waste choking the city’s coastline.
From Srinivasapuram and Pattinapakkam to the Marina, beaches are now carpeted with single-use plastics, liquor bottles, broken thermocol, and dense mats of water hyacinth, turning the once-lively stretch into a grim tableau of urban neglect.
When TNIE visited the Adyar estuary on Tuesday evening and Wednesday morning, heaps of waste lay piled along the shore, deposited overnight by the outgoing tide. The sheer volume of debris, residents say, is unprecedented and a direct consequence of years of unchecked dumping into stormwater drains and river systems that eventually discharge into the Adyar.
“Every time it rains or the river opens up, the sea throws back what the city dumps into it,” said K Bharathi, president of the South Indian Fishermen Welfare Association. “We’ve been complaining for years that untreated waste is being let into the river, but nothing changes. The government needs to realise this is not just a sanitation issue — it’s killing our livelihood and the sea itself.” “When we cast our nets, we pull up more plastic than fish,” said Murugan, a traditional fisherman.
“We used to earn at least Rs 500 a day. Now, we spend hours cleaning our nets of plastic waste. It’s heartbreaking. The sea has always fed us, but now it feels like we are fishing in a garbage dump.”
Conservancy workers of the Greater Chennai Corporation are facing a relentless task — cleaning beaches that are continuously replenished with waste from the Adyar outflow.
“By the time we clear one section, the next wave brings in more,” said a worker, as she loaded mounds of plastic into a tractor. In one instance, a JCB deployed by the water resources department to widen the river mouth was seen burying plastic waste into the sand instead of removing it, a move environmental experts say is counterproductive.
“These materials disintegrate into microplastics, which marine animals mistake for food,” said marine biologist TD Babu.
“They can cause internal injuries, block digestive tracts, and release toxic chemicals like styrene and benzene into the food chain. From plankton to fish, these pollutants accumulate and eventually reach humans. It’s a slow-moving health crisis.”
Babu added that thermocol and polystyrene are among the worst offenders. “Polystyrene can adversely affect the physiology of marine organisms, including microalgae. The government must install floating screens or booms at least 100 metres before the river mouth and upstream to trap plastics before they reach the sea,” he said.
