Madhumitha Viswanath By

Express News Service

CHENNAI: Two days ago when 40 students from Loyola College visited the Pallikarnai Marshland for conducting a detailed survey, they could see raw sewage leaking into the lake through stormwater drains. Volunteers of NGO Arappor Iyakkam who accompanied the students were surprised to find that the outfalls they had detected two years ago in a similar audit were still not plugged by the authorities.

As such outfalls are prevalent across three major rivers in Chennai including Adyar River, Cooum and Buckingham Canal are yet to be plugged, the Rs 600 crore river restoration project has made negligible progress since it was launched in 2015.

Though residents and activist groups have alerted officials about such pollutants time and again, no efforts have been taken to put a stop to these. “Arappor Iyakkam has found through its audits that there are more than one lakh illegal connections through which sewage pollutes these rivers. I have personally seen this happen at 14 locations in the city and I have also forwarded a complaint to metro water and cm cell, but officials remain to lethargic about this,” said C R Balaji, a civic activist.

Also, households that lack underground sewage connections illegally dispose of their waste through stormwater drains. And in other cases, private tankers who clear septic tanks from apartments discharge raw sewage along the city’s peripheral areas due to the lack of underground sewerage system. “Sewage is discharged at various spots along the Buckingham Canal from Kotturpuram MRTS station till Thiruvanmiyur station. But though officials inspected the canal near Gandhi Nagar, they couldn’t plug it permanently,” said Meera Ravikumar, a resident of Gandhi Nagar.

Express visited different locations in the city where unplugged outfalls were visibly spewing raw sewage into the rivers. These include Thiru Vi Ka bridge in Adyar, under Jafferkhanpet bridge near

Ekkaduthangal, under Maraimalai Adigal bridge in Saidapet, eastern side of Ethiraj Salai bridge in Egmore, along ECR Link Road, along Burma Colony in MGR Nagar, and near Sathyamurthy Nagar along Manali highway.

A total of 337 sewage outfalls were identified in 2011 by Metro Water as plugging them was crucial to restore the rivers. It was in 2011, the AIADMK government started the initiative again and in 2015,

Chennai Metro Water plugged 51 of the 179 outfalls works for which were undertaken in the first phase. They said the remaining 128 outfalls would be plugged by January 2016 with a budget of Rs 150 crores.

“Even after a delay of two years, not even half this number has been plugged. As Chennai expanded in 2011, Chennai Metro Water never took the initiative to undertake a new survey to identify the outfalls. If

these aren’t plugged, a big question mark looms over the entire restoration,” said an official sources privy to the matter.

When Express contacted top Metro Water officials, they refused to comment. The irony is Metro water has yet to plug the outfalls identified nearly 10 years ago. And now there are plans to expand the city eight times the size it was earlier.

Experts feel that an alternate idea of using constructed wetlands to dispose of sewage may fare better as the plan to install STPs along river beds is yet to materialize. “STPs may work initially when they are installed. But due to high power consumption, usage of these will get expensive. Instead, wetlands can be constructed along river beds where organic matter and heavy metals will be absorbed into the ground,” said Dr S Mohan, professor of environmental and water resources engineering wing of IIT Madras