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Speaking of effluvium, let us move on from the gaseous to
the liquid and solid varieties. One of the joys of my childhood was to ride on
the back of my dad’s aforementioned Lambretta along Spur Tank Road, a curvy stretch of which
paralleled a beautiful canal called the Cooum. When I was older, I learned that
the “canal” was actually a 64-kilometer-long river, originating in a crystal
clear rain-fed lake of the same name. A
full 18 km of the Cooum river runs within Chennai city limits. Meandering its
way through several of Chennai’s neighborhoods, the Cooum eventually empties
into the Bay of Bengal. Properties that were
situated along the canal were once more valuable because of the fresh breeze
and there was even the occasional pleasure boat cruising the canal. Indeed, my
step-cousin Sapthasayee once won an engineering innovation prize for a tricycle
that floated – and which he demonstrated on the Cooum.
 Today, the Cooum is a black, stagnant stretch
of turbid water, fed by innumerable sources of domestic and industrial sewage,
much of it untreated. It barely flows, for three main reasons: its mild gradient of 0.15m/km is barely
sufficient to stimulate a flow, it is silted up with solid matter from
effluents released over the past three decades, and much of its water is diverted further up
the river to catchment areas that supply the fast-growing city’s insatiable
thirst for drinking water. Illegal construction and slum hutments along the
river further impede its flow. Its banks are strewn with garbage on both sides,
and slum dwellers and homeless persons use it as an open toilet. I had the misfortune
to travel many times on the self-same Spur
Tank Road during my visit, and the stench was so powerful that I was
obliged to roll up the car windows. I wondered about the unlucky residents
along the street who had once paid premium prices to buy their properties.
Along the malodorous banks, a few concrete recreational boat docks stand
forlornly, a testament to happier times. As a schoolboy in the 1970s, I
remember being excited when these were built. No commercial boating service
ever developed for obvious reasons.
The six main waterways of the city, the Adyar and Cooum
rivers, the Mambalam drain, the
Buckingham canal, the Captain Cotton canal, and the Otteri Canal
are all in similar dire straits. Residential areas without sewers release
untreated sewage into the canals. A 2002 study of Chennai’s coastal waters
found high levels of toxic heavy metals in the waters at both the Adyar and
Cooum river mouths. Minimum oxygen levels to sustain marine life were also
found to be absent in these rivers. The stagnant waters are a breeding ground
for Malarial mosquitos. Public latrines along the river directly release fecal
matter into the water. Another study of the use of the Cooum water by buffaloes
showed high levels of fecal matter in the water as well as disease-causing
coliform bacteria in the milk of buffalos reared along the banks of the river.
While the sources of
pollution are apparent, a long term solution to the problem is less clear. E very new state administration arrives
with an announced plan to clean up the mess, but the waterways at the end of
its tenure tend to be in just as bad or worse shape than at the beginning. The
actions needed are indeed obvious: to reduce the inflow of industrial waste
water and untreated sewage, to remove encroachments on the river bank, to reduce
the diversion of water upstream, and to de-silt the river permanently. But it
is unclear who is in charge – is it the Chennai Corporation, responsible for
storm drains, the Tamil Nadu Pollution Control Board whose job is to control
pollution levels, the Chennai Metro Water and Sewerage Board (Metrowater) which
looks after sewer lines and domestic
waste water, or the Public Works Department with general responsibility for
other waterways? When everyone is “responsible”….you guessed it. A hard-hitting
integrated effort with accountability is badly needed. It is time to treat the
problem as a genuine emergency.
Go to next section (9. Solid Waste)
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