a day ago
Activists to campaign for saving waterbodies
Trichy: Members of the Tamil Nadu Rivers Retrieval Movement have announced a statewide campaign to restore waterbodies and watersheds, aiming to increase the state's water storage capacity.
They also urged the govt to improve its efforts on water conservation.
Addressing reporters in Trichy on Monday, activists highlighted that among the 18,000 micro watersheds in the state, 6,000 are classified as irrecoverable. "The govt and the district administrations should take efforts to recover at least the remaining 12,000 watersheds under schemes such as MGNREGA to enable them to conserve water up to their full capacity.
The authorities must also create new waterbodies to store 200tmcft of water every year," said D Gurusamy, an advocate and the coordinator of the outfit.
The movement announced that it will start the statewide campaign from Trichy on Sept 29. Members would meet the collectors in each district to put forward their demands. We would also consider legal courses of action if ours demands are not met, they said.
The representatives regretted that a majority of the surplus water released at 1 lakh cusecs from the Mettur dam recently was directed to the sea without any utility. They claimed that around 20% of waterbodies have disappeared since independence due to various reasons and sought safeguarding of the existing waterbodies by restoring them to their full capacity.
S Yoganathan, the movement's secretary, and representatives of Thanneer Amaippu K C Neelamegam and K Sathish Kumar were also present.
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