As the northeast monsoon sets in, Velachery residents are preparing for another season of flooding, haunted by memories of the 2023 deluge when water reached neck-deep levels in several neighbourhoods. Many households have begun rebuilding homes at higher elevations, lifting parking spaces and reconstructing ground floors solely for vehicle storage. Residents say they have spent lakhs to raise floors as water had risen up to five feet inside homes last year.
At the heart of the problem lies Velachery Lake, which once served as a 255-acre flood buffer but has now shrunk to just 55 acres. Despite repeated directions from the Madras High Court and the National Green Tribunal (NGT) to survey, demarcate, and remove encroachments, the Water Resources Department (WRD) has taken no substantial action. The department has acknowledged identifying 955 encroachers but claimed that eviction might lead to a law-and-order situation.
A visit to the area shows the lake almost erased from the map, replaced by a sprawl of huts and kutcha houses on both sides of the 100-Feet Road. The Adambakkam end has turned into a narrow canal while the opposite side functions as a small pond. The outfall of the lake is clogged with water hyacinth, and desilting has not yet begun.
The blocked lake has had cascading effects on several surrounding localities, including AGS Colony, Venkateshwara Nagar, EB Colony, Dhandeeswaran Nagar, Baby Nagar, and Ayothi Colony. Water that should drain through the Veerangal Odai into the Pallikaranai marshland now stagnates across these neighbourhoods. Many of the link drains are barely three feet wide and carry mostly sewage, while others taper off without proper outlets.
Velachery lake’s surplus water has three outflow routes — to the Buckingham Canal, via Veerangal Odai, and through the Perungudi–Velachery Station Road drain. None of these are functional at full capacity. The Buckingham Canal has not been desilted for years, Veerangal Odai remains blocked by hyacinth, and the Perungudi drain has been narrowed from its original 30 feet to 10 feet due to construction and encroachments.
Residents’ associations have once again approached the Madras High Court, accusing civic and state officials of contempt for failing to comply with previous court orders.
In March this year, the High Court directed government departments to survey encroachments in 12 major waterbodies across Chennai, including Velachery Lake. The WRD had issued 55 notices to encroachers, but no further steps have followed. The department had earlier committed to completing identification and removal of encroachments before June 12, but eight months later, no evictions have taken place.
Velachery MLA JM Assan Maulaana has maintained that the neighbourhood can withstand up to 25 cm of rainfall but that extreme rains could overwhelm even major cities. He said that eviction drives could affect people’s livelihoods and that additional pumping arrangements have been made through the deployment of 600 motors.
The current state of the Velachery lake and its linked channels indicates that large portions of the neighbourhood remain at severe risk. Areas near the Velachery MRTS station, Phoenix Mall, and Ayodhya Colonies, now densely built-up zones were originally designed to drain into the Velachery tank through the Veerangal channel leading to the Pallikaranai marsh. However, major stormwater drains have instead been diverted into the Taramani system, which connects to the already overburdened chain of drains at Sholinganallur, Pallikaranai, Okkiyam, Thoraipakkam, and Neelankarai.
The Velachery Station Road–100 Feet Road corridor, which links the MRTS and Taramani, has also been constricted by encroachments, further impeding drainage. Senior WRD officials have admitted that these obstructions continue to worsen flooding every year and said repeated requests have been made to civic bodies to take corrective action.
Despite judicial reprimands and government assurances, the 255-acre Velachery lake remains largely encroached and unmaintained, leaving more than 3 lakh residents exposed once again to severe inundation as the monsoon advances.
Why Velachery will flood again:
It’s early days for the northeast monsoon, and Velachery residents are already bracing for the worst. Haunted by the 2023 floods when they waded through neck-deep water, many are raising floors, lifting parking spaces, and rebuilding homes from… pic.twitter.com/Py1S89SXmZ
— Omjasvin M D (@omjasvinMD) November 4, 2025
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