The Times of India 30.08.2009

Rs 38cr Tambaram water project hits a roadblock

D Madhavan & Vivek Narayanan, TNN 30 August 2009, 05:26am IST

CHENNAI: The Rs 38-crore Water Supply Improvement Works project in Tambaram municipality has come to a halt after the forest department refused to allow the municipality to lay pipes inside its Ottambakkam reserve forest area in Oragadam. The municipality need 33 hectares of land of 30 metres width and 1,100 metres length inside the Reserve Forest to lay pipelines for the project.

The forest department is worried that at least 250 fully grown trees will have to be cut down to lay huge pipelines along one kilometer in the reserved forest. Already a large number of trees on either side of the road have been felled as part of the road widening project undertaken by the Tamil Nadu Road Development Company (TNRDC) at a cost of Rs 41.87 crore to convert the Vandalur Walajahbad road into a four-lane stretch. "Most of these trees are more than half a century old. Even if we plant saplings today, it would take several years for them to grow into big trees. On our part, we have to increase or at least maintain the existing green cover under our control, especially in reserve forest areas," sources in the state forest department told TOI.

At present, a majority of the nearly two lakh people in the municipality get water only once a week and in some areas such as East Tambaram and Selaiyur, residential colonies get water once in 10 days. Tambaram residents get only 50 lakh liters of water a day, as against their requirement of 160 lakh litres. The requirement is expected to go up to 300 lakh litres per day by next year. Water shortage has remained high on the agenda of the municipal council meetings.

Hundreds of large pipes have been lying abandoned along the 33.4-km Vandalur- Walajahbad road since two months as the multi-crore project to be executed by the Tamil Nadu Water Supply and Drainage Board (TWAD) has hit the roadblock. It was in April 2007, local administration minister M K Stalin announced in the Assembly that the scheme would be implemented, based on the detailed project report (DPR) prepared by the TWAD a year ago.

According to the plan, half the project's cost is funded by the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM) and the other half is a grant from the state government and the local body's general funds.

The project envisages creation of new sources on the dry bed of the River Palar, sinking of 13 infiltration wells in the river, new main pipelines and feeder lines between the headworks and Tambaram and creation of ground-level sumps and overhead tanks.

Officials of the Tambaram municipality, however, sounded confident that the project would be revived. "Moves are afoot to get the land from the forest department on a lease of Rs 15,000 per year. Works would begin soon," Tambaram municipality chairman E Mani said.

Deccan Chronicle 30.08.2009

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