The Chitlapakkam Rising story: How a Chennai community saved a lake

Editor’s note: The last two decades have been witness to the rapid and devastating march of unchecked urbanisation and climate change in India’s cities. Among the first victims of this change is freshwater and access to it—from rivers which sustained local ecosystems, to lakes and groundwater which quenched the thirst of residents. In this series, the Good Food Movement examines the everyday realities of neglect and pollution. It documents the vanishing and revival of water bodies, and community action that made a difference.

At the end of a 14-year-long stint in the US, in 2012, a 38-year-old techie Sunil Jayaram felt an urge to return to India—more specifically to Chennai, the city he calls home. When he set foot on Indian soil, he could not help but notice how much of urban India was drowning in waste. He was particularly struck by what was unfolding in his own backyard: the Chitlapakkam lake, situated in his neighbourhood, was choked by trash—a result of years of civil and municipal neglect. Alarmed by the decline of a public space he once held dear, Jayaram felt an urgency to act.

Chitlapakkam, a locality in south Chennai located about 25 km from the city centre, is home to nearly 60,000 residents. It urgently needed organised conservation efforts to prevent its lake from degrading beyond revival and vanishing. It all began when Jayaram identified the potential of local WhatsApp groups—meant for sharing cinema updates—to bring people together. The oft-quoted words of social activist and Nobel laureate Kailash Satyarthi, nudging people to act, echoed in his mind.

The movement’s spirit and success is also evidenced by how its neighbouring localities admire and emulate it.

He reached out to two other young Chitlapakkam residents, Udaya Utthandi and Ezhildasan. At first, their intent was focused on small-but-effective interventions: painting walls with anti-littering slogans and urging neighbours to keep bylanes and roads clean. But those small acts soon gathered momentum, growing into wider initiatives like weekend cleanups. Thus, Chitlapakkam Rising—which started a people’s movement—was born in October, 2014. To this day, it remains an active presence on Chennai’s streets and Facebook, serving as a platform for people to voice local, civic issues. 

Once comprising all of three founding members, the movement has grown immensely over a decade to thousands of volunteers on the ground and followers online, driven forward by a core team of 50. After six years of consistent organising as well as strengthening the community structure and purpose, the work of the movement began to show strong results and came into the spotlight: in 2019, the Tamil Nadu chief minister earmarked Rs 25 crore for Chitlapakkam Rising’s lake restoration project. In 2024, the lake and Chitlapakkam Rising were awarded the Tamil Nadu Governor’s Award for Environmental Protection; they were recognised for designing a replicable, scalable model for urban freshwater resilience. The movement’s spirit and success is also evidenced by how its neighbouring localities admire and emulate it.

The fragility of Chennai’s water infrastructure 

As per the National Water Bodies Census–that surveyed, for the first time, all of India’s water bodies (in 2017-18)–only about 3% of India’s 24 lakh water bodies lie in urban areas. Across the country, metros and Tier 1 cities are fast losing their water heritage. In Chennai, this erosion is especially stark: once home to more than 474 wetland complexes that supported both people and biodiversity, the city has witnessed an 85% decline–over the last three decades–in the area of its wetlands, due to unchecked urbanisation. This loss has critically affected the city’s natural ability to store rainwater, recharge aquifers, prevent floods, and manage climate-related risks. 

The 2015 Chennai flood and following droughts exposed the fragility of the city’s water infrastructure, prompting renewed attention from citizens and authorities. Plenty of reports detail just how Chennai’s water bodies have been degraded by encroachment, garbage dumping, untreated sewage, and large-scale development projects; Chitlapakkam lake isn’t an outlier, but rather an example of a troubling civic reality.

From volunteerism to activism

In the early days of Chitlapakkam Rising, the work taken on by the founding members and volunteers involved tasks like cleaning streets and railway stations. The walls of stations were stripped of old posters and transformed with artwork. The nature of these activities attracted locals, inviting them to participate and engage. Soon, the group began to ask itself questions about the state of waste in their neighbourhood: Why was trash spilling out into public spaces? Why was its management failing? Who was responsible for it? These questions gradually shaped their collective journey from straightforward volunteerism to strong, people-driven activism.

In 2018, a catalyst came in the form of a massive garbage mound, piled over 40 feet high, beside the lake. Its stench and spillover loomed over a nearby government school, making everyday life unbearable for children and teachers alike. They reported constant nausea, vomiting, and respiratory issues due to the burning of this waste and foul smells. Even the borewell water drawn from the school grounds was reported to be contaminated. "We had to bring drinking water from outside," recalls retired school teacher Suguna Sampath.

Additionally, access to clean water became a daily struggle. Residents were paying increasing amounts for tanker water, from Rs. 600 to as much as Rs.1,500 for 6,000 litres during summers. "We used to slip into depression, waiting all day for the arrival of tankers," says Sharadha, an active volunteer with Chitlapakkam Rising. 

Despite years of petitioning from 2015 to 2019, government action remained elusive—and never focused on Chitlapakkam.

This personal plight was a microcosm of an eventual citywide collapse: in June 2019, Chennai announced “Day Zero”, with all four main reservoirs—Red Hills, Cholavaram, Poondi, and Chembarambakkam—running completely dry. The whole of Chennai, especially Chitlapakkam, was hit hard, as groundwater declined sharply and access to tanker-delivered water became a matter of survival. On this day, 1.1 crore people went without drinking water. 

Despite years of petitioning from 2015 to 2019, government action remained elusive—and never focused on Chitlapakkam. It was only when the citizen movement grew and drew larger public attention that the bureaucrats stepped in. "We decided to desilt the lake ourselves. When we did, 1,500-2,000 people joined us. That pressure made the government act," says Jayaram.

The local community was moved to act, even as bureaucratic processes moved at their own pace. Driven by a shared purpose to revive their neighborhood lake and its surroundings, a group of informed and determined residents, including engineers, IT sector workers, climatologists, retired government employees, and homemakers, came together to form a collective that continues to highlight the community’s efforts and spirit. Udayavaani, a civil engineer from the neighbourhood, explains, “The challenges we collectively faced brought us together and after the floods, it became clear that no one was coming to help. We had to take matters into our own hands.”

Social media became a powerful, vital tool during times of crisis, helping the residents to mobilise, put pressure on officials, and draw in volunteers. As a well-informed and closely knit community, they turned to social media to organise, amplify their voices, and demand attention. With relentless posts tagging officials and visual evidence in their hands, the community made it impossible for the government to ignore their plea. As a result, in 2019, the government sanctioned Rs 25 crore under the Water Resources Department (WRD) for the lake’s restoration—a milestone for Chitlapakkam Rising.

The WRD’s Assistant Engineer Narendrakumar, who led the restoration, praises the community’s knowledge and commitment, highlighting that daily petitions poured in not just from groups, but individuals, too.   

Also read: Bengaluru is fated to run out of water. When will the crisis hit?

Water conservation & flood mitigation

Experts agree that there is no universal approach to restoring water bodies. Each lake or pond has its own set of challenges and must be understood within its specific ecological, social, and cultural context. For this reason, every restoration project begins with a detailed assessment. During this phase, teams study crucial aspects such as water flow patterns, hydrological conditions, and soil quality. Geospatial mapping and climate analysis are also conducted to identify peak water levels and understand seasonal variations. 

“Before we began the full-fledged restoration, we decided to approach the problem scientifically,” says Dayanand Krishnan, a civil engineer and a GIS consultant from the community. Many other members–like Krishnan–from the community were mobilised by Chitlapakkam Rising wherever they were needed: for legal processes, political efforts and greening projects. Krishnan, on his end, proposed installing a gate system at all of the lake’s inlets to prevent the entry of sewage water—a first-of-its-kind approach for an urban lake in Tamil Nadu. This would control the inflow and redirect the sewage; a collection well on the southern side of the lake would divert the wastewater away from the main waterbody. The idea was later adopted by the WRD, which eventually designed and implemented the model.

Generally, in urban setups, sewage from homes flows through 6-inch pipelines into manholes, which then transport the waste to pumping stations–essentially, to large underground wells. From there, it is either treated or directed to larger bodies like rivers or lakes. 

"The lake was no longer just water storage; it was climate adaptation in action," says Kumaran Ram, a volunteer climatologist involved in the planning.

In the Chitlapakkam model, the lack of visibility in stormwater drains was addressed: when the cover slabs over these drains break or go missing, it becomes difficult to detect whether sewage is mixing with stormwater.

“Another innovation was the way this system helps dry the lake during summers, allowing any residual black water to be drained. This drying period makes it easier to remove siltation. Silt forms a layer that prevents rainwater from percolating into the ground. Think of it like a layer of soap blocking water flow in a bathroom drain; silt does the same to soil, blocking groundwater recharge. By controlling sewage inflow and regularly removing silt, we ensured the lake could breathe again, literally and hydrologically,” says Krishnan.

“Trial pits were dug up to 10 feet to assess soil permeability. Soil samples were tested by PWD labs, confirming that effective recharge was taking place beyond 6 feet. This scientific approach is essential for building climate resilience,” Narendra explains.

Chitlapakkam lake’s original storage capacity was around 7 million cubic feet, but years of neglect had reduced it to just 5 million. The desilting process, along with proper deepening and strengthening of bunds, didn’t just bring the lake back to its former state; they significantly enhanced it. Today, the lake can hold up to 12 million cubic feet of water, storing rainwater during monsoon and supplying it during summer.

For a lake to aid in water conservation and flood mitigation, it must turn dry during summers and absorb water during monsoons, rather than overflowing. The renewed rainwater harvesting capacity in Chitlapakkam was built to withstand 60 cm of rainfall, inching closer to Chennai’s average of 100 cm. "The lake was no longer just water storage; it was climate adaptation in action," says Kumaran Ram, a volunteer climatologist involved in the planning.

Also read: The intertwined fate of Navi Mumbai’s Kolis and the Kasardi river

The need for community ownership

Creating walkways, parks, and pathways around a lake can instill a sense of ownership among the youth. "Other lakes around Chennai have started adopting a similar model," says WRD Assistant Engineer Narendrakumar. Such transformations can fill the community living nearby with pride. “During our early postcard campaigns (a movement circulating informational material, collecting signatures), the children themselves pointed to this dumpyard and collected signatures demanding its removal. Today, as we stand in this transformed space, those memories make the journey feel even more meaningful,” says Udayavaani. 

“People once called this area ‘Kuppamettu School’ (a school near a garbage settlement) and ‘Saakada Eri’ (a lake turned into a dumping ground)—names that reminded us of how neglected this place used to be. But now, when someone says Chitlapakkam, they talk about the beautiful lake here, and that change fills me with pride”, says Suguna.

However, the construction of a sewage treatment plant (STP) is yet to be initiated by the local government, which leaves the question of long-term success that lasts generations, unanswered.

Also read: In Gurugram’s rise, a cautionary tale about satellite cities and groundwater

The way forward

“For any institutional change, classifying all urban water bodies as hydro reserves—akin to reserve forests—would help in their maintenance and make people and governments accountable for any illegal activities taking place in their vicinity,” says Arun Krishnamurthy, the founder of Environmentalist Foundation of India which works across the country for wildlife conservation and habitat restoration. “A multi-stakeholder task force should be created with representatives from the judiciary, government, academia, and local organisations, to keep a check on dying water bodies that can be rejuvenated."

There’s also a need to change public perception: lakes should not be seen merely as recreation zones or flood buffers, but as ecosystems that need biodiversity to thrive. "We all want the lake to be ‘comfortable’ for us. That’s the wrong mindset. Instead, we must think from nature’s perspective," says Ramaswamy, a concerned Chitlapakkam Rising volunteer.

"We all want the lake to be ‘comfortable’ for us. That’s the wrong mindset. Instead, we must think from nature’s perspective," says Ramaswamy, a concerned Chitlapakkam Rising volunteer.

Members of the movement are now extending their support to nearby localities, such as Sembakkam and Nanmangalam, where pressing issues include sewage mixing into the lakes and the rampant growth of water hyacinths, which clog water flow and damage the water table. Alongside their weekly clean-up and maintenance drives within Chitlapakkam, they help other groups by guiding them in filing petitions and raising awareness. 

What initially emerged as collective knowledge and learning within one movement, one neighbourhood, has evolved into a sustained, community-driven process—one that thrives on follow-ups, demanding accountability, and a commitment to long-term change. This model of solidarity underscores the power of individuals coming together, not just to clean but to transform. As India faces the escalating twin crises of urban water and waste, the success of Chitlapakkam Rising shows that solutions lie not only in government policy, but also grassroots action. When informed citizens take charge, change becomes not only possible, but inevitable.

Artwork by Prabhakaran S

Edited by Neerja Deodhar and Anushka Mukherjee

Produced by Nevin Thomas and Neerja Deodhar

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