Chembarampakkam Lake (Waterbodies of Chennai - 35)

If you are from Chennai or a suburban area around Chennai, you would have definitely heard about Chembarampakkam Lake. You might be depending on this lake for your drinking water needs. Else, you and your property would have been badly affected due to overflow of this lake in 2015 Chennai floods. For good and bad reasons, you would remember this lake forever, if you belong to this city.

Chembarampakkam Lake is one of the two river fed water reservoirs of Chennai city, the other being Puzhal Lake. It is located in a village called Chembarampakkam, at a distance of around 30 kms from Chennai.

The lake has 3,645 mcft as full capacity and its full tank capacity is 85.4 feet.

For all practical reasons, Chembarampakkam Lake can be considered as the origin of the river Adyar. The source of water from Malaipattu Tank near Manimangalam village and another source from Adanur Tank near Guduvanchery flow as thin layer of water. Technically, Malaipattu and Adanur can be considered as the origins of the river Adyar. However, the flow of water supply from Chembarampakkam Lake makes Adyar a perfect river.

Happy travelling.

Note: As per a report, there were about 650+ waterbodies in Chennai region till 1980s. Today, only a fraction of them exist. And, most of those surviving waterbodies hardly have water and even some of them that  have water had been shrunk badly. In Chennai, there are tank roads without tanks nearby and lake view roads without any lake in the vicinity. There is a high possibility that even the few waterbodies that we have today might vanish in the near future. I thought of visiting the currently surviving waterbodies of Chennai and its suburbs and write about them in my blog as a series.