A Rs. 40-lakh project, undertaken by the Meenakshi Sundareswarar Temple, here to ensure permanent water storage in its Golden Lotus Tank has borne fruit, as water has begun accumulating in the tank following the recent rain.
Temple sources told The Hindu on Sunday that the work on tank floor has been completed under this project, which was based on a report submitted by the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT)-Madras after a request from the temple. Now, the tank would always retain at least two and a half feet of water.
“A soil expert from IIT-Madras visited the temple last week and approved the quality of the work done in the tank. Since water has already begun to accumulate, the expert has suggested dropping the earlier proposal to install a layer of synthetic membrane to retain the water,” sources added.
As such the project has been completed under natural settings itself with no artificial additions. Only the beautification works remain.
Under this project, the tank floor bed had been filled with two feet of clay soil, which ensured that water stayed in the tank, an official said.
Further, all the rainwater harvesting systems in temple has been spruced up to ensure that water from all the structures flowed towards the Golden Lotus Tank. A proposal to fill the tank with lotus plants was being actively considered by the temple to tackle water loss through evaporation.
IIT-Madras team
After a detailed study, the IIT-Madras team, comprising a Professor in Department of Civil Engineering, Ravindra Gettu, and two students concluded that the tank’s earlier floor of one foot of concrete and a half-a-foot of stone, put around 20 years back, was allowing water seepage.
