[1]Rows of tanker lorries roar in and out of the lake round the clock. Accustomed to the jarring horns, hapless locals move to the edge of the road and make way for these trucks. A stone’s throw away, authorities at the civic body office turn a blind eye to the pending files. Outsiders easily mistake it for a metro water filling station. But, these scenes unfold regularly not at a metro water filling station but next to the Kovilambakkam lake.
Not far from here, several water pipes run from the lake to the bund, where drivers are busy filling their tanker lorries from the Nanmangalam and Keelkattalai lakes. Private water suppliers have made a killing, illegally pumping water from most of the lakes in the southern city fringes for long.
Curiously, in most cases, the borewells are either dug inside or few meters off the lake.
As per law, no borewell should be dug within 200 metre from a lake, for commercial purpose, but the private tanker operators pump water from wells within 100 metre and in many cases, they even dig borewells in the lake bed, a local PWD official admitted . “When we question them or try to intervene, we face political pressure,” another PWD official in Keelkattalai complained recalling how he had to intervene numerous times to prevent a councillor from selling water from his borewell located 50 meters from the lake in Kilkattalai.
In Kovilambakkam, the water mafia has laid cables inside the lake to power submersible pumps and fill tanker lorries.
Farmers along the lake are easy prey for the water mafia as they exploit borewells and open wells in their farms along the water body.
Despite warnings, some farmers even rent their farms and wells to the water mafia, officials said.
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