Kovilambakkam Lake (Waterbodies of Chennai - 49)

This was perhaps one of the biggest lakes in the suburbs of Chennai. It might have occupied an area of around 160-180 acres originally. Now, it is hardly one-fourth of its size, thanks to the mindless construction, encroachments, and illegal water extraction by the water-tanker lorries. Most of the lake area was converted into a temple, church, and hundreds of houses. What remains is a dry lake. The lake is almost dead now.

Happy travelling.

Note: As per a report, there were about 650+ waterbodies in the Chennai region till the 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 have been poorly shrunk. In Chennai, there are tank roads without tanks nearby and lake-view roads without lakes. There is a high possibility that even the few waterbodies we have today might vanish soon. I decided to visit the currently surviving waterbodies of Chennai and its suburbs and write about them in my blog as a series.