The Vacation Bench of the Madras High Court has sought a status report on the construction of a check dam on the Kollidam river between Mel Kumaramangalam, Nagapattinam district, and M. Adanur, Cuddalore district.
When the public interest litigation filed by Mohan Kumar, a resident of Thirumeniyarkoil and a former panchayat president came up before Justices R. Mahadevan adn M. Govindaraj, the court directed the Secretary, Public Works Department, to file a status report within four weeks.
The petitioner submitted that due to extensive extraction of water through borewells from near the Kollidam, the groundwater level from Vaderengam to Thittachery had dropped drastically.
Former Chief Minister Jayalalithaa, who was aware of the problem, announced that a barrage with a storage capacity of 0.6 tmc feet of water would be constructed between M. Adanur in Cuddalore district and Mel Kumaramangalam village in Nagapattinam district. Though the announcement for ₹ 400 crore was made in July 2014, the work to construct the barrage had not been taken up so far, the petitioner contended.
The project was supposed to help expand farming and provide drinking water security in the tail end areas of the delta.
The proposal for the barrage was originally conceived in the 1990s but was shelved for unknown reasons.
