Buckingham Canal could be a usable waterway in 4 years – Times of India

Chennai: The Buckingham Canal, which now is a large sewage drain for a large part of its course in the city, is expected to become in about four years the waterway it was envisaged to be.
Its restoration will be part of the clean-up of water bodies Greater Chennai Corporation, PWD, Metrowater and the Chennai River Restoration Trust (CRRT) are taking up in the city.
The CRRT has prepared the restoration plan of the canal and its drains that will be executed by the PWD and the corporation at an estimated Rs 1,280 crore. Metrowater will take up plugging the sewage inlets and set up modular plants to treat sewage at Rs 1,001 crore, said the official. Work is expected to begin in April 2021 and is scheduled to be completed in a phased manner over three years.
A senior corporation official said about 16,000 families were found to have encroached upon the water body and its drains, affecting the flow of water and leading to the release of untreated sewage into them.
Like it did in evicting and resettling squatters from along the Adyar and the Cooum river banks, the Tamil Nadu Slum Clearance Board (TNSCB) will extend a helping hand, said a senior TNSCB official.
Already, about 95% of the 12,000 families of squatters from the Cooum river banks have been rehabilitated in TNSCB tenements at Perumbakkam, Navalur near Padappai and Athippattu near Ambattur, a senior PWD official said. While a similar exercise was undertaken on the banks of the Adyar river, about 5,000 families remain along the course and will soon be evacuated, he added.
A senior bureaucrat pointed out that many had blamed the devastating December 2015 floods in Chennai on the delay in taking decisions by the authorities and said that but for the floods, the eviction of encroachers from the Cooum or Adyar rivers could not have been taken up more seriously. The same seriousness will be shown in clearing the Buckingham canal and restoring it to its past glory, he added.