Following their clean-up of Sellur tank a few months ago, the Madurai-based volunteers’ collective Vaa Nanba has taken up cleaning of the 11-acre Kosakulam tank.
As part of the ongoing cleaning up activities in and around the tank, which started last Sunday, the volunteers said that they woul be removing the seemai karuvelam (Prosopsis juiflora) growth and strengthen the tank bund.
M.C. Saravanan, one of the coordinators of the group, said that though there was water hyacinth growth in the tank, they were not planning to remove it now. “The tank has some amount of water, most of which is from a sewage channel flowing in. Unless we stop the inflow, the growth cannot be removed,” he said.
He added that their group had also taken up the task of stopping the inflow of sewage water into the tank. “With the permission of Public Works Department, we are blocking this channel through which sewage water is coming to the tank and instead diverting it to another channel nearby,” he added.
A. Rahman, another coordinator, said that the task was comparatively smaller than the Sellur tank. “Sellur tank is huge and there were encroachments, which were beyond our control. However, successful completion of the work in Sellur tank gave us the confidence to take up this work,” he said.
According to Mr. Saravanan, the local public also pitched in on the first day of the clean up activity in removing the garbage dumped in and around the tank. “We started the work with an awareness programme in the neighbourhood. Many people said the groundwater level in the area has sunk deeper due to non-maintenance of Kosakulam tank, which once served as an irrigation tank,” he said.
Mr. Rahman said that the group would be planting saplings on the tank bund, which will help in strengthening the bund further. Mr. Saravanan said that the group had also taken up the cleaning of another tank near Usilampatti.
