Notice on plea seeking to evolve rules for desilting

The division bench comprising Justice S Manikumar and Justice Subramonium Prasad before whom the plea came up ordered notice returnable in four weeks.

M Mohan Kumar, a field biologist working for the protection of wildlife and nature in Tamil Nadu had submitted that State Government has decided to desilt the ponds and tanks in the State to aid more storage of water for irrigation and drinking purpose and also raise the groundwater level.

He further noted that while desilting the depth of the water bodies should be maintained in a prescribed ratio since the storage of water and microorganisms are interconnected. But, with such desilting work progressing without any rules or guidelines, the lake-bed soil is being excavated along with indiscriminate removal of flora and fauna, which may take hundreds of years for its formation.

This, he submitted was bound to affect the birds and animals, which depend on the said water bodies and the quality of water will also get affected due to this.

Moreover, the valuable native trees and plants which are very essential for a wetland ecosystem are being destroyed. Due to the same the flora and fauna found in the water bodies are highly affected. Along with this, the sand mafias and brick manufacturers are indiscriminately excavating the soil of the water bodies for their commercial purposes, the petitioner said.

He also cited the desilting at Vedapatty, Pudukulam a big water body in Coimbatore district, wherein hundreds of native trees, namely, Acacia Nilotica has been auctioned for several lakhs. All those trees were axed down affecting hundreds of nesting birds and also resulting in the flora and fauna of the said water body getting ravaged.

Similarly in Kolarampathy tank at Nagarajapuram though the permission for cutting down the trees were not granted, hundreds of trees were uprooted by using JCB machines and taken away by the miscreants, the petitioner said and sought for a direction to the State to evolve suitable guidelines to be followed during such desilting work.