Cooum River

The Cooum in Chennai

The Cooum (Tamil: கூவம் Kūvam ) is a 65 kilometers long river in the South Indian state of Tamil Nadu. The Cooum originates in a village of the same name in the district of Tiruvallur, flows eastward and empties into the metropolis of Chennai (formerly Madras) in the Bay of Bengal. Above Chennai the river is dammed by the Kesavaram Dam at a lake. The water is used to supply the city of Chennai and greatly reduced the amount of runoff. The course of the river Cooum is narrow and meandering. Within the Chennai's Cooum flows through the city center and empties near the Fort St. George in the sea. In Chennai, several thousand people live in precarious conditions in slums on the banks of the Cooum.

The Cooum is heavily silted and especially heavily contaminated area in the urban area of ​​Chennai. During the dry season the river carries little water and is virtually exclusively powered by untreated sewage. In the water of the lower river course is almost no oxygen present, but high concentrations of heavy metals. During the Cooum was formerly used for fishing, come today because of the strong contamination before any fish in the river. Currently, a project of the World Bank will be encouraged to improve water quality.