Nirupama Viswanathan By Express News Service CHENNAI: The battle for clearing lakes in Pallavaram is an ongoing one. After several pleas and petitions, one of the waterbodies in Pallavaram, the Putheri lake, finally got its moment under the sun for the right reasons, when the officials began restoring the lake. But, happiness seems to be short-lived for residents living around this lake. Less than a year after its restoration, a large part of the lake is brimming again with water hyacinth, which is said to thrive in sewage. Like the neighbouring Pallavaram lake, whenever complaints of any sewage leakage arise in the area, excess sewage from the manholes is pumped out into this lake by Pallavaram Municipality staff, allege residents. PV David, a resident of Aishwarya Nagar, off Erikkarai Road, in Chromepet, said that every ten days there is a sewage leak due to a choked network. “Every time we keep complaining to the officials and they come and pump this sewage out into the lake,” he said. There is also a sewage collection well near the lake from where untreated sewage was, until recently, being let into the lake whenever there were blockages in the connection line from the well to the sewage treatment plant, said residents. “Until the first week of January, it was common for municipality staff to pump sewage into the lake from the collection well. It stopped after I raised a complaint with the Municipality Commissioner,” said David Manohar, a resident and civic activist. Although sewage from the collection well is not pumped into the lake anymore, it hasn’t stopped staff members from draining sewage from the neighbouring streets into this waterbody. The lake was restored at an estimated cost of `30 lakh as part of Corporate Social Responsibility funding. The Municipality desilted the southern part of Putheri lake at a cost of `10 lakh in 2017. Local residents say that the lake has already shrunk to 1/3rd of its original size of around 10 acres due to encroachment. Express found mounds of water hyacinth that were removed from the lake, and deposited in its banks. However, numerous others still remain spread across the lake. Express had also reported earlier that Municipality officials were found draining sewage from manholes into the Pallavaram lake using submersible pumps. Pallavaram Municipality officials remained unavailable for comment.

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