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| North Chennai Thermal Power Plant, Ennore |
When the Britishers came to settle in the Pulicat Lagoon around 1620, the Dutch had already established themselves in Pazhaverkadhu (Pulicat) village along with a port, which was completed in 1613.
There was a constant fight between the Dutch and the British for the docking rights. The British grew tired of the Dutch and decided to move further south. This forced Francis Day and Andrew Cogan, to acquire a “strip of sandy land” from Damarla Venkatadri Nayak, the Vijayanagar Empire’s “Governor” of the coast from Pulicat to SanThome.
Who knew then, that this piece of land bought for building a temporary trading post, would go on to become the cultural and economic hub of South India.
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Estuary, where Kosasthalaiyar meets Bay of Bengal
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Ennore Creek is located between Pulicat Lake in the north and the Manali marshland in the south.
Over the years Ennore has become the hub of a range of industrial projects, mainly thermal power stations, fertilizer factories, industrial ports and coal yards. Many of them let their untreated wastewater flow into the Ennore Creek; others amount to the air pollution in Ennore.
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| Huge container traffic due to presence of two ports |
The Ennore Creek spreads over 8000 acres. Of this, 1090 acres of wetland area has been lost to encroachments. Another 300 acres of Creek has been damaged by flyash from North Chennai Thermal Power Station’s leaky flyash pipelines. The existing encroachments have drastically altered contours by raising the level of the reclaimed land by up to 15 metres above sea level.
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| A view of the North Chennai Thermal Plant from near the Creek |
Kamarajar Port wants to convert an additional 1000 acres of wetland into real estate.
TANGEDCO is dumping sand and debris to block the Creek and the Kosasthalaiyar to build a coal conveyor for the ETPS power plants.
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| Chennai Suburban Train passing over a bridge near Ennore Creek |
The good news is, only 15 percent of the Creek has been encroached upon. Saving the remaining 7000 acres is a definite possibility. Arresting all further diversion of the Ennore wetlands, and reversing the encroachments wherever possible will vastly improve the region’s resilience to extreme weather events such as storms/cyclones, heavy rainfall and water scarcity.
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| Boating near Ennore Creek |
The encroachments have reduced the depth and the spread of the Ennore Creek. Once a famed fishing ground with a rich diversity of commercially valuable fish, prawns and crab, the Ennore Creek is gasping for life. Fishing economy has been badly hit, and once self-sufficient fisherfolk families in Mugatwarakuppam, Sivanpadai Kuppam and Kattukuppam have been reduced to poverty.
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| Fishing near Ennore Creek |
All images in this blog are my own.
Do checkout this [storyofennore] blog website to follow on Ennore.
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