Work undertaken in the name of providing basic infrastructure facility has set the stage for the slow death of a water body in the heart of Nandivaram-Guduvancherry town panchayat.
A year ago, the civic body had decided to upgrade the mud path on the bund of a lake located behind the police station into a cement concrete road so Kanniamman Koil Street could be linked to the arterial Grand Southern Trunk (GST) Road (NH45).
When the work was undertaken, a regulator on the bund was demolished and a canal-like structure was set up to help the flow of water from the more than 10-acre-wide lake into a 15-acre fertile farmland, owned by a temple in the town panchayat.
Farmers who have taken the temple land on lease fear the replacement of the regulator with a canal will hamper their agriculture operations in the years to come.
It will not only affect farming operations, but also hinder recharging of groundwater level in the area, say farmers.
Apart from that, the consistently low water storage levels will also result in further encroachment of the lake on its south side, says a farmer.
