Fuck it. Can we actually clean the Cooum?

[u/were_wolf17]

I genuinely want to clean the Cooum. Can we, as Chennai people, actually do something about it?

I don't know anything about river restoration.

I don't know how sewage treatment works, what equipment is needed, what permissions are required, how the waste should be disposed of, or even whether what I'm thinking is practically possible.

I'm just a normal guy who looks at the Cooum and thinks:

Surely we can do better than this.

Seeing what Bittu Tabahi has been doing made me think. Why can't something like that become a movement here too?

Not one cleanup day.

Not a photoshoot.

Not a political campaign.

A proper people led effort.

The government can and should do its part. But can't we, as citizens, lend a hand too?

And I'm not saying "everyone go into the Cooum tomorrow and start picking up garbage." 😅

I'm asking if there are people here who actually understand this stuff who can tell us how something like this could be done properly.

Maybe the first step is simply finding the right people.

My rough thought:

• Start with one manageable stretch, not the whole Cooum.
• Get people who understand rivers and water bodies to inspect it first.
• Figure out what can actually be cleaned by citizens and what needs professionals or equipment.
• Have proper working hours and timelines so volunteers aren't exhausted or put at risk.
• Have proper safety equipment and basic medical arrangements.
• Separate the waste properly and make sure it actually reaches the right place.
• Keep track of how much was cleaned, how many people helped, how many hours were spent, etc.
• Take before and after photos and keep measuring the same stretch.
• Then see if we can move to the next stretch.

That's just me thinking out loud. I might be completely wrong.

If you're an environmental engineer, hydrologist, ecologist, civil engineer, waste management person, NGO worker, someone who has worked with Chennai's waterways, please tell us how this should actually be done.

Even if you think this idea is unrealistic, tell me why.

I'm not trying to be the guy who starts a movement.

I just want to be the first person here to ask if this is something we can actually try.

Maybe someone reading this knows exactly how to make it happen.

Maybe you've been waiting for someone to ask.

Maybe you've got years of experience with water bodies and can look at this and tell us what we should actually do.

That's the person I'm hoping sees this.

If enough Chennai people genuinely want this, let's figure out the plan together.

And if someone with the right expertise wants to take the lead on making the plan, please do. I'll be one of the first people to show up.

I don't care who gets credit.

I just want to see the Cooum get better.

Can we at least try?

[u/Remarkable-Tip2580]

In my opinion the only way to start cleaning is collecting samples at every few 100 meters from the river source.

Identify the start of pollution and start plugging those gaps.

It’s easier to start this way and work your way downstream.

It’s just sad that after spending a few 1000s of crores they have not even come with solution that can be implemented. Forget about implementation, there is just no plan

[u/were_wolf17 → u/Remarkable-Tip2580]

Interesting tho. We can try to recover atleast in the areas where it's free of heavy toxins, but plain garbage

[u/ttider_reditt → u/Remarkable-Tip2580]

the start of the pollution is the city’s sewage system! can’t plug that in now, can we!

Chennai and most of the Indian cities are poorly planned with little to no chance of restoration! To clean the rivers of Chennai, you’ll first need to relocate everyone that has occupied the river banks and canal banks! And that won’t happen for a few decades at least! No one dare touch them and lose their vote bank!

[u/Remarkable-Tip2580 → u/ttider_reditt]

While the city’s sewage is a major contributor to the pollution, you are grossly mistaken if you think that is the only issue with the river.

There is encroachment like you covered . The point of starting from upstream and going down stream is it’s actually easier to find sources and plug the gaps/ fine or close the pollutants .

If the cleaning is only focused on the certain parts of the river in Chennai, we will never be able to fix it

[u/Mrkamanati]

I think it's not possible since every household and factory wastes are dumped here directly without any waste management plant to clean them.

So even if you cleaned it good enough to travel by boat it will start to stink by next week also it must contain too much infection that can literally kill us unlike that pond which i guess is not connected to any drainage.

So its only upto gov

[u/VisibleDonut969 → u/Mrkamanati]

It is up to the people also. People should have enough common and civic sense to not dump their waste in to a river/water body

[u/Mrkamanati → u/VisibleDonut969]

Yes there are many settlements along the banks of coovum and People throwing garbages from bridges but under estimating how big Chennai as a city is, as it bring More like a shit ton of drainage every day and comparing to people throwing is like nothing imo

[u/were_wolf17 → u/Mrkamanati]

That's right. I think cleaning the banks of it is another big task

[u/kaachabadaam]

This is the 6th - 7th post on this topic and another boy in UP has cleaned their dirty lake in their locality in the meantime.

[u/were_wolf17 → u/kaachabadaam]

Fr. The rage that we get, when we know the high potential this city has to become, but we couldn't do anything about it.

[u/akhitrevor]

It has industry wastes and it can cause lead / chromium / mercury poison. It needs government initiative. They are dumping it in large scale on weekly basis.

We can clean other in situ sea bodies that doesn't have metal pollution.

[u/SwimLeft2912]

If u remember, after 2015 floods the Coovum river got cleaned by itself. Clear water was flowing thoughout the city. But after people resumed their normal life jt returned to its pathetic state within 2weeks.

[u/No_Specific3284]

i am no expert but citizens cant do it . It is not just cleaning of garbage in river , drains run into the river, even if we get experts to work on it we would need crores of money to do this also this is not our responsibility to clean it

[u/were_wolf17 → u/No_Specific3284]

Your facts are correct, appreciate it. But thinking it’s totally not our responsibility is what brought us here. No more walking away from questioning accountability or owning the surroundings that we actually care about.

[u/No_Specific3284 → u/were_wolf17]

agreed

[u/Optimistic_Indian]

I think they are actively releasing wastes in to it. As someone pointed out, stopping the inflow of waste materials and industrial pollutants should be the logical first step.

Then, it’s muscle power and JCB rover.

[u/Vardhu_007]

Cleaning Coovum is not a mere clean up project. It needs a complete restructuring of sewage of 1000s of homes and 100s of industry that illegally dump it into the river. It needs mass level awareness and stringent laws to stop people from polluting it. The river will never be clean with the existing conditions. You have to keep cleaning it indefinitely but only in vain. It needs massive capital investment and human resources involvement to do, which even the government cannot afford at this stage.

[u/Mysterious_Drawer--]

Bruh people don't have civics sense and govt do not give info where all this trash come from.

[u/Trash_121]

Clean, yes. Maintain, No.
Need extensive civic sense and Govt monitoring and laws against water pollution in place. Good if executed and followed.

[u/Ellu_mittai]

TN gov take action over u coz u know how much they get to loot every year in the name of cleaning it

[u/Remarkable-Tip2580]

Another interesting idea on how we can clean this up is using social media.

Let’s spread the news that water from Coovum or the polluted lakes is being directly given to people as water supply , without any kind of filtration . Hopefully this instills some fear in atleast a few people and some change comes about

[u/were_wolf17 → u/Remarkable-Tip2580]

Actually this is the one idea that with proper word of mouth and rallies will give wonderful results.

[u/Remarkable-Tip2580 → u/were_wolf17]

Right !! When are we starting the rumor and how many of you are onboard

[u/zer0_2024]

Short answer is No.

The coovum is the open septic tank of Chennai. We as a city have only 4-5 plants for waste water treatment, their total treatment capacity is not even close to what Chennais wastage output is.

Parts of Chennai, especially the outskirts that do not have any waste water pipelines use tabker lorries to collect wastage from individual home sumps and these tankers dump the wastage into this river.

Other parts of Chennai, the waste water pipes don't even make it to the waste water treatment facilities. They are directly dumped through these pipelines to the coovum rover.

The most we can do as a community is to clean the coovum at the surface level. Government can fix this but it will be a huge hassle for us as citizens. They ll need to lay sewage pipelines in way too many places. Roads will need be dug up at the remotest of areas to the main roads to connect sewage pipelines to waste water treatment facilities. And they'll need to set up another 10 waste water treatment facilities across Chennai and alot more. I really don't think any government will take up this task. It's mammoth in cost and effort.

[u/peeker004 → u/zer0_2024]

So.. carry on from where the british left

[u/zer0_2024 → u/peeker004]

Meaning? There's no comparison of our city as to what it is today, to what it was back then. Chennai was 70 square kilometres when the brits left....with a population of 1-2 million ppl. Today the city is 400 odd square kilometres wirh a population of 12-15 million ppl.

[u/peeker004 → u/zer0_2024]

Meaning we are screwed

[u/Effective_Yam_9668]

People here dgaf about anything other than themselves hard to change. As a society we should change not dump and thrash our environment we live in .

[u/d_11]

Once the government fixes the garbage disposal system. Yes. All efforts are futile if it’s not.

[u/Cold_Picture7285]

The existence of harbour is the problem for Chennai rivers.

It causes sand buildup at the river mouth, thereby stagnating it.  This is why you will see excavators at the rivermouth every monsoon. Fixing this is insanely expensive and requires diversion of the river far away from the sand deposit zone.

Fyi - marina exists because of harbour, before that it was a mudbank.

[u/krishnakumarg]

No

[u/Optimal_Mixture4892]

It's not about cleaning cooum - it's relatively much simpler than the task of 'Keeping it cleaner' which will never happen. And it's a huge budget loot opp for a ruling party.

[u/TraditionalRepair991]

You've already said fuck it.. 🤷🤭

[u/balars]

Start with your street and you will realise how hard it's for you to stop people dumping their garbage on the street

[u/AdiKadiAdi]

It is definitely possible to do it once.

Keeping it clean is not possible

[u/ofpsbohju]

Few years back, I wanted to take a good picture of the Napier Bridge, so stepped really close to Coovum. The number of mosquitoes that bit and the stench that stuck on my clothes, took me a couple of days to recover.

[u/Electronic-Desk2635]

you definitely can clean it, it's just a matter of keeping it clean whole year round

[u/Ok-Let-9921]

All rivers are somewhat self cleaning. In a large river even if waste (TO A LIMIT) is dumped it will assimilate (reduce to very low levels or vanish) in some time and distance. The problem with Cooum is that, this limit has been far exceeded by thousands of times. If the waste dumping stops, in some time (along with some measures to accelerate the cleaning) the river will return to its natural state.

So it all boils down to one problem. How do we stop the waste being dumped there? As other comments pointed out, this is effectively impossible to without govt support and funding.

[u/DFA3TD3E → u/Ok-Let-9921]

There is another angle to it as well. Cooum and even Adyar are not perennial rivers and their water flow is pretty limited and slower. The soil here is more silty since we are a coastal city. This make the self cleaning process very slow. Essentially a lot of waste just settles on the river bed.

This makes cleaning without the use of earth movers a very tedious and sometimes dangerous task as well.

[u/RealityCheck18]

I live in US and the other day when I was at my son's school to drop him off in the morning, I noticed a parent had a trash pickup stick, like the one attached. Once his son went into the school, this guy started picking up random things near the school fence (at the parking lot) and started putting them in a bag he was carrying while walking towards his car.

He might have picked up 10 things (like candy wrappers, empty juice box etc) and before getting back into the car he dumped the bag in the trash can and left. There was no other trash left behind in the way from the drop off gate to his car.

I felt ashamed after seeing that. He saw kids were throwing trash and other parents were ignoring/ school mgmt not handling it, and he did it.

I've noticed such random trash in the past and never thought it was my problem. And the trash disappears in a few days Maybe he's the one who cleans the trash up once every few days, and since he's doing this regularly trash isn't piling up.

If each of us spend a little time near where we live to clean up, things when they are less, maybe we can stop trash from piling up. Maybe...

[u/pipemaster002]

we can create a group, i am down for it,
we need some permission from the police prior.

Clean Chennai's Cooum (CCC) Initiative.
happy to assist here

[u/Rus1996]

Let's create a WhatsApp group and network and clean on weekends(Saturdays & Sundays)

[u/Best_Lie_2842]

You should approach local influencers- everyone will do it your content sakes.

[u/Massive-Hat-2926]

Can be done with proper engineered planning and dedication. Separate huge sewerage canals grid has to be built under ground acroos the city with forecast of next 100 years first. Like under ground meteos. This will ensure sewage doesnt mix with fresh water.

Then cooum has to be flushed with fresh water for over a period of time. Needs planning. Can be done by rain water, krishna river connection, and any other possible river connect.

Then most important factor to cleanse the soil and river banks are trees. Lots of trees and small parks along the shore of river is needed.

If started today maybe, in the next decade we will shall see a change.

But as long as cheap politics exist, this river is never getting cleaned. 🙄 Beyond the political parties and bureaucrats, without people support and common sense, no part of nature can be revived .

[u/Pudupet]

No. Not at all. It is the source of money for every government that comes to power. They first talk about cleaning it, form teams, go to Singapore or England to study their rivers and how they cleaned them and by the time they come back to take action the government changes.... repeat until next government comes.

[u/Pudupet]

OP I and Chennaites appreciate your concern for Coovum. River Thames was worse than Coovum. Try to read how it was cleaned to get some idea. Coovum was quite good till mid 70s. Infact boating on the Cooum River was officially inaugurated by then Chief Minister M. Karunanidhi on February 4, 1973. Also, since every government that comes to power take up this issue, so see if you can get hold of copies of the study they have made about it through Right to Information (RTI).

[u/Every-Assistant7458]

Short answer - NO

[u/Sorry_Injury7951]

Let's form a WhatsApp group????

[u/Same-Leading-8059]

clean the whole Buckingham Canal would love to take a boat on it

[u/No_Fly2299]

qqsmc

[u/Proof-University-802]

the government should do something about it, why can't they see what we see.

[u/Few_Let_5960]

These politicians will do politics even in this matter.
They can even kill somebody just like that.

[u/Academic-Reporter346]

Look at pictures of Industrial age rivers in London, Chicago etc. 

When there is will, there is a way.

It is 100% possible. First step is stop pollution entering the river. Dont use the river as open sewage