ENVIRONMENT-INDIA: Last Ditch Attempt to Save Wetland

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Lalith Sridhar

CHENNAI, India, Dec 4 2002 (IPS) - Driving southward of this parched southern metropolis, the Pallikaranai wetlands first announce themselves to passersby through an overpowering stench of garbage.

For others they are obscured from sight by concrete settlements that southern Tamil Nadu state’s chief minister Jayaraman Jayalalithaa vowed last month to put a stop to by declaring the entire area as a “reserve forest zone” for the city.

But Jayalalithaa’s initative may be too late to save what may have been an important water source for a city faced with chronic water shortages and what many residents remember as a wetland paradise for fish, fowl and fauna a couple of decades ago.

Presently a steady stream of garbage dumpers can be seen making their way every day to Pallikaranai while settlements are steadily coming up on the filled-up sites.

Smoke spirals up from stacks of garbage set aflame to reduce bulk but not quite enough to discourage the flies that swarm about, the pigs or the impoverished ragpicker children poking about to see what can be retrieved for the recycling industry.

One report puts the number of ragpickers at Pallikaranai at more than 100, with a per capita collection of 40-45kg/day.

With a per capita solid waste volume for the city put at 0.585kg/day and an annual increase assumed at three per cent, the total revenue from recovered materials itself is computed to be worth approximately 10 million dollars a year.

When she undertook an aerial survey of the area in the southern quadrangle of the city last month, following heavy rains and floods, Jayalalithaa’s attention was drawn to urban encroachments that compete with the dump trucks to abuse a feature vital to the ecology of the city, the capital of Tamil Nadu.

A verdant expanse of 40-50 sq. kms some 25 years ago, the Pallikaranai marsh has now shrunk to less than 4-5 sq. km. Besides the overlapping issues of encroachment and development, this sensitive ecosystem is dying for taking on the role of the city’s largest, unsanitary municipal garbage dumping ground.

And all this despite Pallikaranai being identified as an important national wetland requiring urgent conservation by the Union Ministry of Environment and Forests with the support of the United Nations Development Fund (UNDP) and the Salim Ali Centre for Ornithology and Natural History.

Baseline studies conducted by the volunteer group Care Earth for the Tamil Nadu Pollution Control Board calls the Pallikaranai marshes, as “the most extensive, yet least protected” ecosystem in and around Chennai city.

Here is a mosaic of grasslands, scrub, marsh and water-filled depressions, home to rich bio-diversity and a vital aquifer for a city which depends largely on fast depleting groundwater supplies being destroyed relentlessly by haphazard and ill-conceived urban development.

Over the last 25 years, official apathy has resulted in something like 90 per cent loss of habitat for the 180 species of fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals and a few hundred inconspicuous forms of microorganisms, plants and invertebrate animals, say experts.

An estimated 3,500 tonnes of solid waste from the city are dumped here every single day, with studies showing high levels of chloride, sulphate and heavy metals contamination in the marsh.

Says Sheela Rani Chunkath, chairperson of the Tamil Nadu Pollution Control Board: “In most countries, what is compostible they will compost, what is recyclable they will recycle and what is hazardous alone they will take to a landfill but here we are just collecting and dumping.”

Chunkath, known for her dynamism and commitment, said source segregation of garbage could save the Chennai Municipal Corp 120 million dollars annually.

Much of the present problem is being traced to the award by an earlier government of waste-removal contract to the Singapore-based multinational Onyx whose methods were controversial and charges too high.

Said M.B. Nirmal, founder of the environment group Exnora International: “By paying Onyx per kilo of garbage lifted, the service terms actually reward solid waste volumes. This sort of practice is not to be seen in any developed country and we are presently shifting garbage instead of managing it.”

Chunkath said she saw nothing in wrong in privatisation. “But if everybody does their his or her own task, we don’t need to privatise or we need to privatise only a little part of the task.”

Spearheading a community based movement that segregates garbage at source as compostible, recyclable and hazardous, Nirmal cites successful examples in 40 zero waste centres across the city and in nearby towns such as Vellore, Trichy, Cuddalore and Pondicherry.

“Source segregation turns garbage into a revenue earning, employment generating asset but instead we are destroying a fragile marshland and spending billions doing that,” Nirmal said.

There are no reports on the aquifer qualities of the marshlands which are perennially wet. The Care Earth Study does, however, suggest that it was “plausible that the marsh recharges aquifers and augments potable ground water for the city of Chennai”.

Contamination and deterioration of the quality of ground water was in fact one of the grievances cited in a public interest litigation filed by the Sri Sai Nagar Residents Welfare Association against the State of Tamil Nadu in 1998 in one of several citizens’ initiatives to save Pallikaranai.

Says T. K. Ramkumar, advocate-activist and member of the Exnora Naturalists Club which undertook the earliest formal studies of the Pallikaranai marshlands: “Part of the reason why no sustained study of the ground water table was done is that the marshland water itself is brackish.”

“That the marshlands help recharge the city’s dwindling groundwater tables cannot be ruled out but the quality of subsoil water needs to be analysed since there is the serious possibility that leaching from the dumping ground has already affected ground water supplies.”

Besides the garbage dumping, the so-called Metro Water Sewage Treatment Plant on the western side has been dysfunctional since the last 20 years and it spews untreated sewage continuously and directly into the marshlands.

Surprisingly, the Chennai Metropolitan Development Authority has approved the area adjacent to the municipal dumping site for residential purposes without providing even a buffer zone dividing the dumpsite and the residential colony in an area where garbage is piled 30-40 metres high and dumping is undertaken round the clock.

Said Chunkath: “We have issued notices to the corporation as well as to adjacent municipalities to stop letting untreated sewage into the marshlands. But we need viable alternatives.”