Water-distribution Efforts in Madras: From Sailor George Baker (1750s) to Engineers John Jones, Hormusji Nowroji and James Madeley (1870s–1920s)

Madras (now Chennai) has been, and is, an acutely water-scarce city. Today the city’s landscape has undergone substantial changes losing many of its reservoirs. In this context, here we highlight the efforts made in distributing water to Madras residents from the late 17th to the early 20th centuries. In the 1770s, George Baker, a sailor, dug large wells in the ‘Seven Wells Street’. In the late 1860s, James Fraser (Madras Engineers Corps?) proposed to the Government at Fort St. George that the Kôsasŧalai river should be accessed for water for Madras and the water be stored in the now near-extinct Spur Tank. Kilpauk – about a kilometre away from the Spur Tank – was chosen, instead, because of cost. The Madras-Municipal Water Works (MMWW) at Kilpauk was formally launched in 1872. Although the Government of Madras owned the MMWW, the Corporation of Madras (CoM) retained the responsibility of day-to-day water distribution. In the 1880s, John Alfred Jones, executive engineer, CoM, improved the open channel that delivered water from the Red-Hills reservoir to Kilpauk. He proposed construction of filter beds in MMWW. In 1903, an Indian engineer Hormusji Nowroji from the Government service was seconded to CoM. During his stay with CoM until 1912, Nowroji worked on improving water distribution. He submitted a report to the Government, the Nowroji Report, untraceable today. James Madeley from Manchester, UK, was appointed as the Special Engineer to CoM, in-charge of drainage works. Because his position was equal to that of the Chief Engineer, Madeley is today credited for developing water distribution in Madras. This note refers to the scientific water-works of Jones, Nowroji and Madeley. It also brings to light a controversy, not been spoken about previously. Nowroji has written in a British civil-engineering journal, The Surveyor (1915), challenging Madeley’s report published earlier in the same journal. From the early 1970s, the Government of Tamil Nadu (Government of Madras) has been making efforts to the improve water situation in Chennai bending over backwards. One effort was to bring water from the Veerãnam lake in Cuddalore district across c. 250 km. At present water from this reservoir meets most of Chennai’s requirements.