Chennai: The star trip on Saturday apart, the industrial pollution of the Ennore area and the massive encroachments in Kosasthaliyar River are ticking time bombs at the northern head of the metropolis. “The locals have been crying for years for help and we have been constantly sounding the alarm bells. Let’s hope this visit spurs public concern and that would force action by the concerned authorities”, said noted environmentalist Nityanand Jayaraman.
Speaking to DC, Nityanand said, “I met Kamal earlier this week. He had already seen the video, ‘Chennai Poromboke Paadal’ featuring TM Krishna’s anguished rendering of how the poromboke (public) lands are all disappearing, how the water bodies have vanished because of encroachments and industrial pollution. Kamal understood the Ennore problem through that video.
“We were trying to figure out how to raise the profile of Ennore because blatant violations were happening and no action was happening. The government was on the one hand evicting hutments from Cooum in Adyar in the name of flood control and on the other hand, we found there were large encroachments being permitted inside the Kosasthaliyar merely because they were Central government industrial installations. Flood waters will not know the difference between licensed and unlicensed encroachments.
“So we had to highlight the fact that these encroachments in Kosasthaliyar will impact ten lakh residents. Despite Krishna’s video in January (2017) and the substantial amount of traction it generated between January and October, the government sat watching the encroachment of close to 400 acres of Kosaathaliyar by the Kamarajar Port despite our taking the matter to the concerned authorities in the state and Central governments. “In June 2017, the state coastal zone management authority went as far as changing the map of the area concerned to make it appear as if there was no river in the area of encroachment—a fraudulent map and we have full proof of it.”
“The Ennore creek area was originally in 1996 declared a no-development zone under the coastal regulation zone regulation by the Government of India; however, this fact was subsequently suppressed and developments were allowed by the state and Central public sector units inside the wet land. As things stand, close to 1400 acres of the wet land have been encroached upon and Kamarajar Port has planned to encroach upon at least 600 acres more”.
“When the fact that these encroachments were illegal was brought to the attention of the state government, the Director of the environment department furnished a new map that denied the existence of the Kosasthaliyar above the north of the estuary. Evidence has been since unearthed to prove that this map is fraudulent”, Nityanand said.
