The tamarind tree on College Road  | Photo Credit: Photos: Prince Frederick

On College Lane, the spanking-new stormwater drain line takes on a curiously odd geometric shape near the entrance of State Bank of India’s local head office.

Viewed and interpreted by someone who can charitably dubbed “an amateur geometer”, it is somewhat close to being a hastily splintered half of a parallelogram. Moving on to a ground paved with greater certainty, the shape is suggestive of an effort to skirt around objects that cannot be dismantled. Off the bat, one thinks of utility lines curled up within the earth, ignoring a handsome peltophorum tree towering over it.

Hawkers plying their trade around the spot aver the SWD work primarily took those odd steps to protect the tree.

“See, the roots range over the space!” an amiable voice pipes up.

With the GCC official close to the work unable to be reached, the street vendors’ word seems the only peg to hang any conclusion on, until one traces the course of stormwater drain line which curves sharply, like a TMT steel bar subjected to a bending machine, and moves into College Road.

At the very beginning of its journey on College Road, there is a pronounced effort to save a tree — in this case a tamarindus indica (tamarind) tree — locked in a tight hug with a compound wall.

In a strange stroke of coincidence, this tree is also found near an entrance of State Bank of India’s local head office, this one smiling upon the busy College Road.

Now, stepping back to view the larger picture, what is at work on these two roads is in all likelihood not tree-hugging, but a conscientious application of rules laid down for the integrated stormwater drain project.

The Greater Chennai Corporation has provided clear-cut guidelines to contractors and GCC officials engaged in the integrated stormwater drain (ISWD) project on how to deal with trees that might seem to be in the way. The cardinal rules, as laid down in GCC’s document on the ISWD project, are:

The environment impact assessment report for its “missing links stormwater drainage project”Greater Chennai Corporation prepared last year, spells out the imperatives in situation where a tree and the ISWD project find themselves on shared ground.

Spotlighting a couple of these imperatives, directed at contractors and GCC officials, the loss of trees should be kept to a bare minimum, and where the work succeeds in keeping the tree intact, care must be to taken to see the tree is almost fully-intact, its roots not nipped to any alarming degree.

On College Road, these guidelines seem to be followed to the letter. There are similar examples from other parts of Chennai, particularly on Dr Radhakrishnan Salai, outside the compound of Stella Maris College, where a tree stands like the leaning tower of Pisa. It had been put through massive trimming, but now it sports fresh shoots. It is refreshing to the eye. There is however a lurking suspicion that to smile and close the book on these trees would be to miss an insidious problem. These trees probably need to catch the eye of horticulturists trained to spot anomalies even doting tree-hugging eyes could miss.

These trees barely survived the axe, more precisely the giant rake of an earth mover, and the shake-up would have its impact on them. Take the case of the tamarind tree on College Road. It sports a cement enclosure, in all likelihood gifted to it in its infancy. Imagine someone wearing their first diaper well into adulthood, literally growing up wearing it. In arboreal terms, that signals a huge disadvantage for a tree meant to grow into a hulking giant. The digging around it now would have divested it of any additional support. The soil it stood on may be intact, but it is weakened soil. Would not such trees require care that looks beyond their survival, ensuring their continued health? Down College Road, other massive trees stand with their baby diapers. The rule book should take care of them, ensuring they survive the SWD work. But the rule book may need to add a few more pages.

The Greater Chennai Corporation guidelines on SWD work also stipulates a tenfold restoration for every tree that faces the axe. The ten new trees should come in the vicinity of the space where that tree bit the dust (see box “Green Points to Remember”).

There are roads where loss of trees has been inevitable. Residents would do well to make a note of where the axe fell, and remind GCC of the promise.

For starters, on Vijayaraghava Road in T Nagar, a banyan tree outside the compound wall of the Andhra Social and Cultural Association was removed to make way for the ISWD project.

On Dr Ranga Road, two trees were noticeably axed.

Residents, go ahead and take a count of the lost trees that ought to be replaced ten-fold in your neighbourhood.

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Printable version | Sep 19, 2022 7:11:09 pm | https://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/chennai/the-swd-rule-book-protects-trees-but-needs-an-extra-page/article65904169.ece