No one understands how this water body vanished
Similarly during the financial year 2014-15 , 318 number of works have been taken at a cost of Rs 9.16 crore.
OOTY: Green activists of Ooty have urged the authorities to retrieve the Burnfoot lake on the Coonoor road here which disappeared over the decades. As early as in 2002-03, a senior scribe, R.A. Dass, represented to the authorities to consider the possibility of retrieving the water body, but no action was taken. Now, Green activists have gathered some clinching photographic and documentary evidence on the lake which existed once in the Thalaiyatimund area, near Lovedale junction.
S. Jayachandran, joint secretary of Tamil Nadu Green Movement, said the photographs had been taken by photographer A.T.W. Penn of the British era. The photographs of the mid-1800s showed that the lake was located to the left of the Ooty-Coonoor road when one proceeds from Ooty. On page 2 and 41 of the Nilgiris district gazetteer of 1908, compiled by W. Francis, there was a mention about the existence of the lake.
No one understands how this lake disappeared over the decades. Now, some private people are holding rights over the lake land. Besides doing farming there, they extract ground water for sale, he said. A study showed that all the water flowing down Tiger hill reservoir and Doddabetta reservoirs would have been stored in the Burnfoot lake during the British period, making it a main source of water in the foothill portion of the west of the Doddapetta slopes.
“This lake certainly must have been a property of government as the gazetteer evidence showed that the government then tried to introduce trout fish there. The Nilgiris administration should act now to restore the lake land and ban groundwater extraction there, as a Madras high court order of 2003 banned commercial exploitation of groundwater,” Mr Jayachandran added.
( Source : dc )
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