Tale of two water bodies in Chennai

Vegetation around Otteri Nullah and Nungambakkam canal needs to be cleared before the monsoon

Anyone taking in this picture without even a faint acquaintance with the details surrounding what it depicts, might end up seeing an idyllic scene — likely, a stream flowing through a forest. The litter might evade the mind or register as just a minor blot on the landscape.

The picture depicts the mouth of Greater Chennai Corporation’s Nungambakkam Canal as it disgorges what is purportedly just rainwater into the Cooum — off Greams Road.

As the image shows, “greenery” lines the last channel of the Nungambakkam canal that brokers a connection with Cooum. There is a proliferation of castor-bean plants towering over much of the other vegetation.

And obviously, the canal can do without this vegetation. It can only end up interfering with the canal’s ability to dispens its duty, particularly in highly-wrought situations caused by heavy monsoonal rains.

From Kelly’s Junction, the Otteri Nullah is within sniffing distance, flowing under a bridge on Tank Road in Medawakkam.

Running parallel to Balfour Road, this part of Otteri Nullah is attracting garbage with the same drawing power a fly trap exerts on insects. Garbage — with an ever-growing accumulation of it — can never be benevolent presence in a rainwater-carrying canal. While the Otteri Nullah continues to carry that burden in these parts, an issue highlighted earlier in these pages, another issue is out there to be seen with epigrammatic clarity.

Helped by the recent showers, the vegetation lining this section of Otteri Nullah has grown thick and high. There is a profusion of castor-bean plants and cat’s paw creepers and a variety of other plant species that can be loosely clubbed as weeds. Weeds or otherwise, greenery is out of place in the bed of a canal, particularly when the canal might be called on to clear a gush of rainwater, carrying it all the way to the Buckingham Canal at Basin Bridge. The Otteri Nullah is under the Water Resources Department’s watch.