Disturbed By Desalination

A fishing village on East Coast Road finds itself stuck between a rock and a hard place, as development comes in the form of desalination plants; and the Villagers claim the promises made to them have not been kept

- T.K. Rohit

Large beach bungalows dot the landscape at Suleri Kattukuppam on Chennai's East Coast Road. A big green bungalow juts further out than its fellows, intruding on to the sandy beach fringing the Bay of Bengal. By way of contrast, the building abutting this bungalow, once someone's home, now stands bruised, battered, and broken by the serial assaults of the ocean.

At the other end of this little enclave, protected by compound walls that tower over the matchbox sized houses built by the Rotary Club for the villagers after the 2004 tsunami, stand the two large green tanks that are visible markers of the Nemmeli desalination plant.

The Nemmeli plant is intended to convert sea water into potable water sufficient to meet the requirements of an estimated 10 lakh people in Chennai, at a cost of about 230 per kilolitre.

"This plant has only ruined our lives," says M. Anand, a 38 year old fisherman, a pair of shorts peeping out from under his lungi. He holds out a welcoming glass of water, and hastens to add: "This water is not from the plant:' He says this, standing in the shadow of the desalination plant, and seemingly unconscious of the irony. "We buy our drinking water from the nearby village:'

It's quite evident that they have to buy water, as a glass of water drawn from the bore well in his home, located close to the plant, is hard, saline, and undrinkable. "We can use this only to wash clothes and vessels," he says. "Before this plant came up here, the groundwater here used to taste like tender coconut water, it was so sweet," interjects Palani, a 50 year old native.

Standing their ground