Years after authorities and the National Green Tribunal identified sewage, encroachment, hydraulic restoration and maintenance requirements at Perungudi Lake, residents are again asking agencies to intervene before the monsoon. The unresolved question is no longer whether the lake needs restoration, but why planned and reportedly funded works have not produced a clearly documented restoration programme on the ground.
CHENNAI — A fresh demand to clean Perungudi Lake before Chennai’s monsoon has reopened a much older question over the city’s water-body governance: what happened to restoration plans, regulatory directions and reported financial allocations that were supposed to address many of the same problems now being raised by residents?
The Perungudi Lake Area Neighbourhood Environment Transformation, or PLANET, forum has asked the Water Resources Department to dredge and deepen the lake and remove spreading water hyacinth. Residents have also flagged sewage entering through the stormwater-drain network, damaged boundary protection and waste dumping along the lake.
According to the forum, residents have started clearing some of the invasive vegetation themselves. A WRD official told DT Next that hyacinth would be removed when general maintenance works begin, but the official could not immediately provide the present status of the larger rejuvenation project.
That lack of a clear project-status answer is significant because Perungudi Lake has been the subject of government plans and judicial scrutiny for years.
The restoration checklist already exists
In August 2022, the Southern Zone of the National Green Tribunal directed the Chennai District Collector, Greater Chennai Corporation and WRD to survey Perungudi Lake and neighbouring water bodies for encroachments and take action in accordance with law. It also required protective measures around the water body and restoration and periodic maintenance of inlets and outlets.
The tribunal’s directions went beyond landscaping. Authorities were told to prevent untreated sewage from entering the lake, stop waste dumping, deepen the water body where required, maintain hydraulic structures and undertake regular desilting and weed removal.
That distinction matters.
A lake can have a pathway and new landscaping while still receiving sewage. It can be mechanically cleared of hyacinth while the nutrient and pollution sources that encourage aquatic weed growth remain. And it can be desilted without restoring the inlets and outlets required for effective monsoon water management.
For Perungudi, restoration therefore has to be measured as a functioning water and drainage system, not simply as a civil-works or beautification project.
Sewage is the key upstream test
A joint-committee report placed before the NGT documented rainwater inlets to the lake and recommended measures to ensure sewage and sullage generated around the foreshore did not enter the water body untreated. It also assigned responsibilities relating to waste control, sewage management and bund protection across different authorities.
The sewage question remains particularly important because the latest residents’ complaint again says wastewater is entering through the stormwater-drain network.
Separate reporting in July 2025 found that more than 400 households in parts of Perungudi still lacked proper sewer connections despite an older comprehensive sewerage programme, illustrating why lake restoration cannot be separated from the surrounding sanitation network.
Urban Acres cannot establish from the currently available evidence exactly which sewage sources are responsible for the present contamination. But the service-chain requirement is clear:
Property sewage → sewer/interception → pumping → treatment → compliant disposal or reuse
must remain separate from:
Rainfall → street inlet → stormwater drain → lake/outfall.
If sewage continues to travel through the stormwater system, removing hyacinth addresses a symptom rather than the pollution pathway.
What happened to the restoration project?
The institutional history is difficult to follow from public reporting.
In July 2024, Perungudi was among 12 lakes identified for a CMDA programme intended to restore and protect major water bodies in Chennai and its suburbs.
By February 2025, a WRD official was reported as saying the lake was managed by WRD but restoration had been handed over to CMDA.
Today’s report says PLANET was shown or consulted on a ₹10-crore DPR in April 2025 and has received no substantive update since.
Yet another official account complicates the picture. During an October 2025 Chennai Corporation council meeting, a councillor said ₹10 crore had been allocated in 2023 but work had not started. Mayor R Priya replied that the DPR had been prepared and that around ₹13 crore had been allotted, while saying restoration would begin after the necessary approvals and clearances.
Ten months later, the current WRD response still does not establish what stage the project has reached.
The public record reviewed by Urban Acres does not establish:
DPR approval → administrative sanction → expenditure sanction → tender → bid → contract award → mobilisation → restoration works → completion.
Until those stages are disclosed, saying merely that a DPR or allocation exists conveys more certainty than residents actually have.
₹10 crore or ₹13 crore?
The financial record also needs clarification.
Three descriptions have appeared:
- a ₹10-crore allocation reportedly dating to 2023;
- a ₹10-crore DPR referenced by residents in relation to 2025;
- approximately ₹13 crore said by Chennai’s mayor in October 2025 to have been allotted.
They may reflect changes in scope, separate institutional packages or revisions to an earlier estimate. But the public evidence reviewed does not reconcile them.
Urban Acres therefore does not treat any of those figures as established expenditure.
The agencies should publish the current sanctioned amount, funding source, package-wise estimates, expenditure to date and whether the money covers ecological restoration, hydraulic work, boundary protection, landscaping or some combination of these.
The lake-area claim also needs a cadastral answer
PLANET says Perungudi Lake has reduced from around 50 acres to 35 acres because of encroachments.
Historical official material is not directly comparable. PWD told the NGT in earlier proceedings that the tank had a water-spread area of 15.68 hectares and that a fresh survey was needed to determine whether new encroachments existed.
A defensible answer requires a revenue survey showing the notified tank boundary, water-spread area, foreshore and individual encroachments. Resident estimates alone should not be substituted for that survey.
Before the monsoon, maintenance and restoration are different jobs
Immediate hyacinth removal, waste clearance and repair of vulnerable boundary stretches may be justified as pre-monsoon maintenance.
But comprehensive restoration is a different task.
It requires agencies to establish whether the lake has sufficient storage, whether inlets and outlets function, whether sewage is entering the system, whether encroachments constrict the water body, whether bunds and hydraulic structures are sound and what long-term maintenance regime will prevent another cycle of degradation.
This is precisely why the current demand deserves scrutiny rather than being treated as another seasonal clean-up story.
Residents should not have to infer project status from successive announcements by different agencies.
For Perungudi Lake, the next meaningful milestone is not another assurance that restoration will begin. It is a public, dated project ledger showing what has been sanctioned, who is executing each component, when sewage interception will be completed, when contracts will be awarded or works mobilised, and what measurable lake condition will constitute restoration.
Until then, the gap between plan and service remains the central story.
