Buckingham Canal back in the limelight

The restoration of the Buckingham Canal and other water courses of Chennai has yet again occupied the attention of the authorities after the Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam (TVK)-led government came to power in Tamil Nadu nearly three and a half months ago. Sections of the media have reported that the State government is examining a ₹876.35-crore plan to make a 7.2-km-long stretch of the central portion of the Buckingham Canal — from Napier Bridge over the beach road to the Adyar river over Greenways Road in R.A. Puram — navigable again, with passenger boats, floating restaurants, and cargo movement.

Originally constructed in 1806 by Basil Cochrane and privately owned and operated by him, the waterway was then called Cochrane Canal. Initially, the length of the waterway was a little less than 18 km, with the Canal cutting through strips of land and shallow backwaters from Chennai to the Ennore estuary. Subsequently, it was extended to Pulicat Lake, opening up navigation for small craft over a distance of 40 km north of Chennai. Taken over by the government in 1837, the waterway was named the East Coast Canal and extended in 1857 to Dugarajapatnam (in Tirupati district of Andhra Pradesh, around 135 km north of Chennai). In 1878, it acquired the present name, Buckingham Canal, after the Governor of Madras, the Duke of Buckingham and Chandos.

A large number of boats brought firewood, paddy, and other merchandise from Andhra till the 1960s through the Canal
| Photo Credit:
The Hindu Archives

Vital link

Running along the coast for about 450 km (250 km in Andhra Pradesh and 200 km in Tamil Nadu), the Buckingham Canal, taken together with the Krishna and Godavari irrigation canal systems, was once a continuous, navigable stretch of about 650 km. Connecting the Marakkanam backwaters in the erstwhile South Arcot (Villupuram) district (115 km south of Chennai), the waterway had been popular as a cheap means of transportation, though the revenue derived from the traffic had never been commensurate with the expenditure involved in keeping it fit for navigation all year round, The Hindu reported on May 3, 1978. In fact, veteran Tamil poet Bharathidasan, in one of his works, mentioned the boat ride he took from Chennai to Mamallapuram along with his friends in 1934. The waterway helped connect Chennai with places such as Kakinada, Rajamahendravaram, Eluru, Vijayawada, Machilipatnam, Ongole, and Nellore.

The Buckingham Canal once had 28 locks, of which 21 were in the northern section of the canal and the rest in the south. Each of the locks had dimensions of 45.5 metres by six metres. “A draught of one metre is available in the northern canal and less in the southern canal,” said this newspaper in 1978. When the erstwhile Madras Presidency was in existence (in 1952-53), about 2.11 lakh tonnes of goods, valued at ₹3.75 crore, were moved on the Canal. Nine years later, 1.47 lakh tonnes of goods were transported along the stretch running through Tamil Nadu. Gradually, passenger traffic along the waterway went down, with other modes of transport gaining popularity.

Poisonous foam from factory effluences mixed with sewage water flowing into the Buckingham Canal near Neelankarai in July 2008
| Photo Credit:
M. Karunakaran

Pollution

Considering the importance of the waterway, there was nothing surprising about the preoccupation of the establishment and intelligentsia with the renovation of the Buckingham Canal even 75 years ago. On February 18, 1951, The Hindu, in its editorial, had this to say: “At present, the Canal is a convenient receptacle for the drainage of Madras: with a determined effort at improvement, it can be very much more useful, helping to carry very much larger cargoes than at present, of grains, salt, fish, firewood, chunam shells and charcoal to the City of Madras. Provided its smell disappears, even passengers may use it more and more; even now, from Madras southward, the boats do carry passengers.”

Over these years, a number of studies have been carried out on ways to make the Canal and other watercourses clean and free of pollution, and, if possible, navigable. The issue of bad odour has persisted throughout, even in the 1950s, when Chennai was beginning to expand southwards more than northwards. N. Ranga Reddi, Minister for Public Works, told the Legislative Council on March 19, 1953, that “in regard to the odour nuisance, the sources of pollution have been located and a programme of remedial measures has been fixed by the Superintending Engineer of the Madras Circle [of the Public Works Department] and the Sanitary Engineer.” He added that, apart from “a number of improvements” made in recent years to the Canal, a proposal to increase its width and depth was under consideration by the government.

As the Chennai Municipal Corporation (now called Greater Chennai Corporation) was responsible for the collection and disposal of sewage until the creation of Chennai Metrowater in 1978, it was held responsible for the pollution of the Canal and the Cooum. A high-level committee, constituted by the government in 1960, recommended that, to make the Canal and the Cooum “tidy and clean,” the Corporation be dissuaded from letting sewage into the watercourses, reported The Hindu on March 12, 1960.

Efforts to improve Canal

Even as the State government had plans to deepen the Canal in the 1960s, the banks of the waterway became a convenient site for the growth of slum settlements in the city. People from economically weaker sections, many of whom worked in plumbing, electrical works, and housekeeping, found accommodation along the banks, while the ruling Congress, in the 1950s and 1960s, did little to prevent the areas from being converted into slums. Meanwhile, efforts were on to make at least some stretches of the Canal navigable. In 1981, a comprehensive feasibility study on interlinking canals for navigation between Chennai and Kakinada was mooted with German assistance. The watercourses identified were the Buckingham Canal, Commamur Canal, Eluru Canal, and Kakinada Canal.

Settlements on the banks of the Cooum river
| Photo Credit:
B. Jothi Ramalingam

As the Buckingham Canal fell into disuse in the 1970s and ‘80s, the State and Central governments drew up a plan to implement the Mass Rapid Transit System (MRTS), using the Canal’s alignment in the central part of Chennai. In no time, elevated structures of the MRTS came up on the banks of the Canal. In November 1995, the first phase of the MRTS — Chennai Beach to Chepauk — was opened to the public. Two years later, the services were extended to Mylapore; in January 2004, to Thiruvanmiyur; over three and a half years later, to Velachery; and in March 2026, to St. Thomas Mount. For about 15 km, up to Thiruvanmiyur, the MRTS structures have come up on the banks of the Buckingham Canal, drastically shrinking the width of the waterway in many places.

When the authorities were considering closing the central segment of the Buckingham Canal — from the Cooum Lock near Sivananda Salai and behind the Madras University campus to the Adyar Lock near Greenways Salai, R.A. Puram — and developing the reclaimed area commercially, Chennai witnessed floods in June 1996, which was unusual for that period. Many parts of central Chennai, including Mylapore, were severely affected. The government dropped the idea of “killing” the central B’ Canal and, instead, decided to make the watercourse functional. What should not be overlooked is that the B’ Canal, if maintained properly, can function as an effective flood carrier during heavy rain.

Desilting programme

Thanks to an intensive desilting programme carried out during the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) regime of 1996-2001, the southern portion of the waterway, a 14-km stretch between Thoraipakkam and Muttukadu, became navigable again. “The canal’s original width of 23 metres (about 75 ft) has been restored and boat services are looked upon as a distinct possibility,” this journalist wrote in The Hindu on June 17, 2000. Days later, the then Minister for Public Works, Duraimurugan, inspected the improved waterway and took this journalist on a boat ride along the stretch.

The inauguration of a 50-metre trash barrier at Buckingham Canal, Vettuvankeni, in January 2026, aimed at reducing plastic leakage into Chennai’s waterways
| Photo Credit:
V. Umesh Kumar

As there was no follow-up, the Canal had its bad days again. The Inland Waterways Authority of India (IWAI) had even toyed with the idea of making it navigable for about 45 km from Thiruvanmiyur to Kalpakkam, according to a report in this newspaper on September 2, 2014.

Two years later, the proposal was shelved, and the IWAI shifted its office from Uthandi, near Chennai, to Vijayawada in Andhra Pradesh. The only saving grace was that the Union government declared, in April 2016, the 316-km North Buckingham Canal (Peddaganjam-Central Station, Chennai) and the 110-km South Buckingham Canal (Central Station-Marakkanam) as stretches of National Waterway 4.

Having secured the lion’s share of Assembly constituencies that are located along the Buckingham Canal, the ruling TVK has the responsibility to make the watercourse not only a functional flood carrier but also an effective waterway.