The Hindu             05.11.2013

Cooum fenced for better cleaning

The small wooden bridges built across the Cooum river
near Island Grounds for the convenience of visitors making their way to
the exhibition area, have begun to pose fresh problems to the already
polluted river. Floating waste accumulates from areas upstream, gets
trapped beneath these wooden bridges and obstructs the free flow of
water.

In a bid to ensure that the river is clear of
such trash during the monsoon, the Water Resources Department has
blocked the waterway using a chain link fence in two locations upstream
of Island Grounds.

“We have used such a netted fence
for the first time to block the floating waste at a specific place in
the river. The waste will be removed every day so that the river can
flow freely. We had to resort to such emergency measures as the
accumulated garbage was posing a problem at just less than one kilometre
from the river’s mouth,” said a WRD official.

The
stretch where the Cooum river merges with North Buckingham Canal near
Chennai Central station and near Muthusamy bridge has been fenced.

Cleaning
is easier when the river’s width is between 8 and 12 metres. The
river’s width goes up to 20 metres near Island Grounds, and further
blockages by the small bridges were hampering the clearing of garbage
and silt, the official said.

Float-mounted equipment
is being used to clean the waste at various stretches of the river. In
the last month, about 250 lorry-loads of silt and garbage have been
removed from the 7.4 km stretch of the waterway between Koyambedu and
Napier Bridge, where the river meets the sea. From the 2.4 km stretch
between Central Station and Napier Bridge alone, about 30 lorry loads
have been removed in the past week.

The stretch is
filled with waste such as thermocol, packaging material and weeds, and
frequent cleaning was essential, the official added. Machines are also
engaged daily in clearing the sand bars from the Cooum river’s mouth and
maintaining the waterway’s width at 40 metres to avoid flooding, he
said.

However, a portion of the river spanning 4.5 km
between Egmore and Chetpet remains an eyesore as the department has not
taken up desilting due to a tussle with the National Highways Authority
of India with regard to the Chennai Port-Maduravoyal elevated
expressway project.