When Chennai’s Veeranam drinking water project hogged the headlines for all the wrong reasons

The row over the Mekedatu drinking water-cum-balancing reservoir project, aimed at addressing the drinking water requirements of Bengaluru, refuses to die down. Decades ago, the Veeranam project, meant for bringing water to Chennai, had continued to evoke controversy for long.

It was during the Congress’ rule in the 1960s that the seeds for the project were sown.

An investigation by an eminent engineer in the State government, A.R. Venkatachari, had revealed that the project would not only be “very feasible” but it would also not affect irrigation sources. The project envisaged drawing water from the Veeranam tank situated at the tail of the Cauvery basin, about 225 km south of Chennai. The tank gets supply from its catchment of 500 sq. km and through the Vadavar channel, branching from the Coleroon river above the Lower Anicut. Also, it flows during the northeast monsoon. The tank, whose original capacity was 1.441 thousand million cubic feet (TMC), saw an erosion of storage to the extent of 0.930 TMC. Now, its capacity has been enhanced to 1.465 TMC. It has an ayacut of about 45,000 acres.

In March 1967, the DMK succeeded the Congress and decided to go ahead with the project. Three months later, it had formally cleared the project, which would then cost ₹24 crore to convey 40 million gallons a day (MGD) or around 150 million litres a day (MLD). The proposal was to draw raw water from the tank through an intake tower and pump it to the treatment unit at nearby Vadakuthu. Pre-stressed concrete pipes were laid at many points to carry water. In October 1967, then Chief Minister C.N. Annadurai inaugurated the project at an event in the Saidapet constituency, which was then represented by his Cabinet colleague, M. Karunanidhi, who was considered the driving force behind the project. Marking the event, a statue of Mother Cauvery was placed there. Once the project got enmeshed in political controversy, the statue was abandoned, and it lay on the pavement of Anna Salai in the area for years before getting destroyed.

The execution was not as swift in the 1970s as it should have been, but the project hit a roadblock when leakage under pressure developed at the joints of the pipes in certain places. This paved the way for charges of corruption and political row. The project’s execution came to a halt in May 1975 and this was followed by the dismissal of the DMK regime in January 1976. When the State went to the Assembly polls in June 1977, the project became a subject of intense discourse. The AIADMK government, headed by M.G. Ramachandran, which took over subsequently, had abandoned the scheme. The Sarkaria Commission was also constituted to go in to the corruption charges against the DMK regime, and it was before this panel that charges were made on the payment of bribes and the quality of the work. Concrete pipes, produced for the project, were seen lying on either side of the Old Mamallapuram Road for years and some of them became “houses” for economically weaker sections of society. Many years later, when Jayalalithaa of the AIADMK had, as Chief Minister, sought to revive the project, a German journalist, Bettina Weitz, who is well-versed with the water sector of Tamil Nadu, had asked this journalist whether the Chief Minister had intended to embark on another project of “social housing.”

Revival under Jayalalithaa

In 1993, when the city was in the midst of an acute water crisis, the then AIADMK government under Jayalalithaa said it would revive the project. Initially, a scheme for ₹465 crores was drawn up. Later, as improvement works to the city distribution system were also included, the cost was reworked to about ₹1,600 crore. The World Bank agreed to fund the project. When Jayalalithaa lost power in 1996 and she was succeeded by Karunanidhi, the DMK government had decided to shelve the project. Another spell of water shortage in the late 1990s and the early 2000s had compelled Jayalalithaa, who returned to power in May 2001, to announce the renewal of the project yet again. This time, the cost was revised to ₹720 crore and the funding was done through domestic institutions. She launched the project — renamed as New Veeranam Project — in Cuddalore in February 2003 and in about 15 months, most components of the project were carried out. To a large extent, what was originally proposed was executed. The main change was the nature of pipes: this time, they were made of steel. The alignment of the pipeline to Chennai was changed, as Porur became the point of receiving the tank water.

In the middle of 2004, Chennai started getting water and in fact, Jayalalithaa went on to claim, in August 2004, that “had I gone by what these [Opposition] parties had been advising and not taken up the New Veeranam Project, by now, Chennai city would have slumped into an irretrievable situation. Evacuation would have been the only option.” Her government had even decided to implement an extension of the scheme but due to opposition from sections of farmers in Perambalur district, this was dropped.

For the last 20-odd years, the Veeranam tank, whose charm was captured by ‘Kalki’ R. Krishnamurthy in Ponniyin Selvan, has been a steady source of drinking water to Chennai by providing 180 MLD to the city, whose daily water supply is around 1,240 MLD.