Chennai: Forgotten Storm Drains Of A Flooded City

India is a land that is monsoon fed. Rain water is the very life vein of Indian life. So, from the very advent of Indian civilization, water has been revered and rain waters have been welcomed with great happiness and reverence. The Indian civilization also built perhaps the most efficient and most diverse traditional water harvesting network in the history of human species and more importantly made it sustainable through community participation. Towards this end they employed the most potent principle discovered by Indian civilization – the concept of Punya.

Creating and maintaining traditional water bodies – which harvest rain water and manage the collected waters was essentially a community act. Often the traditional water bodies were associated with sacred narratives from national epics as well as local mythologies and divinities. It is essentially water democracy through sacred geography. The community ownership of local water resources and sustained maintenance through the concept of the sacredness of water body made the system decentralized, democratic and efficient.

However with state becoming a major player in water management and later with liberalization bringing private corporates the concept of community-based water management took a backseat. The decadence has set in for decades now.

Chennai is no different.

In 1997, Murugappa Chettiar Research Centre (MCRC), Chennai, surveyed 10,000 households in 155 corporation wards of Chennai about the way water needs of the city residents are met. The study showed that the water needs of the city, as high as eighty percent, were being fulfilled by ground water.  In other words the ground water – the original capital accumulated by traditional water bodies for centuries if not millennia – is being increasingly squandered by present generation without giving much care to replenish it. The MCRC study recommended among other things that there should be public participation in encouraging the ‘ground water recharge by adoption of low-cost water harvesting systems, cleaning of water-ways and renovation of existing recharge structures, such as temple tanks’.

In 2004 Chennai based C.P.Ramaswami Aiyar Environmental Educational Center (C.P.R.EEC) published a book titled ‘Temple Tanks of Chennai’.  The book explains that the Chennai Metropolitan Area had a total of 124 earthen reservoirs and 50 temple tanks.  It further points out that a tank restoration survey was launched in 1883 as part of the recommendation of the Famine Commission. The temple tanks and other traditional water bodies, the hydrological features of the study, revealed, were part of an integral water harvesting system. “However unplanned urbanization”, the authors observe, “has blocked the storm water channels that fed the tank: the water now bypasses the tanks”.  

On the whole the book details fifty temples tanks of Chennai. It details the location of the tank, the temple to which it belongs, the chief deity, the history, mythology and associated rituals as well as the water quality parameters such as dissolved Oxygen, pH etc. Then very importantly it also provides the present condition of these tanks. Just a look at the current condition reveal

• Adambakkam, Nandheeswarar Temple tank: “…Sewage is being let into the tank from the shops on the banks.”

• Ayanavaram, Kashi Vishwanathar temple tank: “…. Due to rapid urbanization around the tank, the inlet and outlet have been sealed.”

• George Town, Kashi Vishwanathar temple tank: “…Due to encroachment all around, the pipeline has been blocked and there is no water in the tank. Over the years, excessive dumping of debris  and garbage along the south eastern part of the tank has resulted in the area getting filled up and being used as car park. ”

• Koyambedu, Kurugalishwarar Temple, Lava-Kusha Teertham: “…The inlet and outlet of the tank have been now obstructed due to rapid urbanization.”

• Mylapore, Kapalishwarar Temple tank, Kapali Teertham: “… The inlet and outlet are obstructed permanently due to constructions.”

• Mylapore, Adi Kesava Perumal Temple, Chithra Kulam: “…It is highly polluted due to human misuse, dumping of garbage, plastic bags and garbage.”

• Nanganallur, Ardhanarishwar Temple, Temple tank: “…It is filled with mounds of garbage and water hyacinth. Sewage was being let into the tank from the shops on the banks.”

• Park Town, Ekambareshwarar Temple, Temple tank: “…Except for the eastern side, tall multi-storied apartments line the other three sides of the tank. The residents of these apartments have scant respect for the tank and pollute it by dumping domestic waste into it.”       

The picture is rather clear: No respect for the temple tank; no sense of community on the part of the residents and no respect for the traditional water harvesting structure on the part of the both the state and the commercial establishments.

Researcher Madhavi Ganesan of Centre for Water Resources, Guindy Engineering College, in her study of the temple tanks of Madras, surveyed 39 temple tanks. The temple tanks have an average depth of 4.5 metres and through them Chennai can harvest and conserve about 1,300,000 m3 of water. Today, unauthorized or ‘made legalized’ constructions sit over the storm drains. Consider the case of the Mylapore Tank where the run-off from the main catchment area of the tank is prevented from reaching the tank – thanks to an unauthorized shopping complex constructed over the storm drain leading to the tank.

The study laments:

“Most of the temple tanks have been dry during recent decades due to urbanization, continuous withdrawal of groundwater and blockage of inlet systems.

Most of the temple tanks were served by inlet systems in the olden days. In recent years, due to mushrooming of commercial and residential apartments in the catchment areas, the inlet systems are totally blocked …” (The temple tanks of Madras, India: rehabilitation of an ancient technique for multipurpose water storage, Indian Journal of Science and Technology, Vol.1 No 7 ,Dec. 2008)

And then in 2015 November it rained and rained in Chennai.