CHENNAI: The desilting work, which was carried out for the last few days at the Mylapore’s Chitrakulam tank to help retain the water-level, has been completed.
The work was completed with the help of the temple’s trust and Single Teacher Schools, a unit of Swami Vivekananda Rural Development Society, which had already done similar pond restoration activities in many villages around Tamilnadu.
The Chitrakulam tank, which is next only to Kapaleeswarar Temple Tank, belongs to the Adhikesava Perumal and was once a source of water that helps in recharging the ground water level around the locality. Even till 2016, the pond had water but in the last few years, it has gone dry. Several desilting activities were happening in the last few years at the pond to retain water in it but so far failed to do so. With the recent desilting activity that happened on a much bigger scale, it is believed that it will help retain the water-level.
Speaking about the project, Single Teacher Schools secretary R P Krishnammachari said, “To address the prevailing water crisis everywhere in the State, we have done similar kind of desilting projects in pond and lakes in districts like Vellore, Thiruvallur, Kanchipuram etc before undertaking the project at Chitrakulam. This was also our first project in Chennai.” It was funded by an American social welfare organisation IDRF.
The project was completed in 10 days during which using a JCB vehicle, the entire layer of the pond was desilted. The tank has seen numerous desilting operations in the past but they have not been beneficial so far, asked about how this project differentiates from the rest of the other projects, he adds, “With this project, after desilting the pond, we have added layers of clay mud.Clay mud helps in retaining the water and we have put several layers of clay in it before filling it up with earth-filling sand, through this, we believe that the water at the pond will be retained unlike other projects which has made the pond dry, he said.”
However some residents living nearby believe that with the increase in borewells around the locality has contributed to the pond going dry and believe that unless rainwater harvesting is done in houses close to the pond, water will not stay at Chirtakulam.
“With the usage of borewells going deep, the water available in the pond was also sucked by the pipes that has made the pond go dry. Though the recent project is good for the pond, we believe that the government or the corporation should ask all the houses surrounding the locality to implement rainwater harvesting. Other wise the borewells will continue taking away all the water from Chitrakulam,” said Venkat, who lives closeby.