This beautiful lake has been contaminated by various natural and manmade factors. And, following the “2015 Chennai Flood”, there was major water scarcity in 2016. Our founder (Sameer Ansari) conducted a root-cause analysis of the issue by conducting various surveys, and concluded that the major water reservoir of Chennai, Puzhal Lake, was scarce and had Zucchini plants, among other reasons for the water shortfall, and initiated a movement of “restoring Puzhal lake” by associating with several other social activists to conserve Puzhal lake.
To “restore Puzhal Lake”, which is an important and essential waterbody in Chennai, SWoTT undertook various activities such as lake cleaning, lake maintenance, tree planting, sapling maintenance on the lake’s chamber, and the installation of security systems in and around the lake.
The SWOTT crew has planted more than 200 saplings along the roadside of Puzhal Lake, and saplings have been kept alive by installing grill/net guarding the sapling. A total of 600 students from various parts of Chennai, Good Word Public School, Elite Matriculation School, Velammal School, Children’s Paradise School, Wards of Government School, and Rajalakshmi Engineering College, took part actively and contributed immensely in restoring Puzhal Lake. These whole exercises have benefited us in removing the large amount of garbage from the shores of lake.
We carried out the cleaning activity on weekly basis, 2 to 3 hours on all Sundays. We have almost crossed 75 weeks of cleaning.
Furthermore, our aim is to completely restore the Puzhal Lake, and installation of butterfly house and beautiful park. The park will attract number of tourist and common resident to perform their usual walking and workouts.
Our cleaning process can be easily categorized into four major processes, viz: (a) cleaning, (b) tree and sapling plantation, (c) maintenance and restoration activities, and (d) wall painting.
And, let us pictographically see all these process.
