On January 24, during the annual bird race organised by the Madras Naturalists’ Society, we set out to count birds in the Great Salt Lake stretching between Kelambakkam and Mamallapuram — an ecologically rich wetland complex now in the process of being recast in official maps as the Mamallan Water Reservoir. 

As Chennai’s sixth reservoir, the Mamallan facility is proposed to be constructed in the Kovalam sub-basin of Chengalpattu district at a capacity of 1.65 TMC, spanning across 5161 acres of the Great Salt Lake, with a promise of securing water for the growing population of the Chennai Metropolitan Area. 

The same promise was given when the Nemmeli Desalination Plant was commissioned in 2013 and expanded in 2016 at the expense of hydrologically critical sand dunes on the East Coast. A new—and the largest—plant is now being constructed in Perur under the same assurances.

Our group’s plan was simple: document the avian presence and walk the terrain marked for transformation. Entering through hamlets such as Nemmeli, Pattipulam, and Krishnankaranai, we moved across a landscape that quietly unsettles the idea of ‘vacant land’ or ‘water body’ often invoked in the project report. 

From the Kovalam–Kelambakkam connecting road to the Tiruporur–Nemmeli road, expansive, water-filled wetlands and dense congregations of water birds were seen. Most of these migratory birds from the Central Asian flyway find refuge in this wetland after the developmental pressure crushed the Pallikaranai Marshes with its real estate expansion and dumping yards. 

Beyond this stretch, the terrain opened into a broad sweep of grasslands, marked by marshy soil that engulfed our feet and occasional patches of stagnant water, until the Buckingham Canal cut across the horizon. As we walked on, we passed people moving in the opposite direction, herding goats and carrying fish and nets — reminders that this was an actively used and lived-in landscape. 

Along with these, we saw boundary stones etched with ‘WRD’ (Water Resource Department), disturbing the landscapes. This was not an empty site awaiting development but a 'living commons'—hydrological, ecological, and social—formally ‘owned’ by the Tamil Nadu Water Resources Department.

In the language of the state, land is classified only into three categories: privately owned ‘patta’ land (including both settlement areas and croplands), forest land, and what is variously termed wasteland, barren land, or poramboke. 

Framed as empty, underutilised, or surplus, poramboke landscapes are increasingly positioned as ideal sites for reservoirs, solar parks, industrial corridors, and urban infrastructure. 

This celebrated classificatory scheme, rooted in colonial governance, continues to structure how land is perceived, valued, and governed even today. Strikingly absent from this archival vocabulary is the........

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