The Ministry Of Environment, Forest And Climate Change recently cleared the Integrated Cooum River Eco-Restoration Project of Tamil Nadu, covering a stretch of 9.6km between the mouth of the river and Chetpet Railway Bridge. Despite the delay of one year, this has come as good news, raising people’s hopes of seeing the river, which is now filled with all sorts of garbage and sewage, clean and restored to its pristine glory. However, a few experts, who have been involved in mapping the historical significance of the river and thereby bring the focus on restoring it, feel that there are several issues that need to be addressed to ensure that this project doesn’t fail like the other similar attempts in the past.
COOUM SHOULD FLUSH OUT NATURALLY
Venkatesh Ramakrishnan, a chronicler of the Cooum river says that no project will be successful unless there is enough water in the river to flush out naturally. Venkatesh says, “As long as Madras is thirsty, the two rivers — Cooum and Korattaliyar — cannot be saved. The people who are talking about Cooum restoration are fooling us, saying that the river is spoiled by drainage. But it’s actually being spoiled by drawing drinking water from it. As long as Chennai is thirsty and growing, no measures of restoration will work. The river is 70km long and if you draw all the water in the first 55km itself, where will the water come from to flush out the river naturally. Two dams on Cooum — the Kesavaram dam and Korattur anicut — draw all the water from the river. There’s no river in the world that is clean without fresh water to flush it. The cleanest rivers in the world are those which are perennial. Now, there’s not a single drop of fresh water flowing into Cooum after Poonamallee. But if the dams are opened, the city will die of thirst.” He adds jokingly, “The only way to save the Cooum is to construct 10 desalination plants and quench the thirst of Chennai.” 
Agreeing with Venkatesh is Padmapriya Baskaran, one of the members of a social media page The Cooum — A Cultural Mapping. “When there’s enough water, Kesavaram dam should be let open, so that there is enough water in the river to flush itself out. What happened during the Chennai floods? There was so much water flowing through the river that it flushed itself out. That’s why for some time after the floods, the water in Cooum was crystal clear.”....Read more

Source web page: Times of India