Five-Year Action Plan for the Manali-Ennore Region Under MERRC
Funding Agency: Tamil Nadu Pollution Control Board.
Location: Manali-Ennore Region.
Coordinators: Prof. Ligy Philip, Prof. Shiva Nagendra and Prof (Retd.) B. S. Murty
The Manali–Ennore industrial corridor in North Chennai is one of Tamil Nadu’s most important centres of industrial and economic activity, but also one of its most ecologically fragile and socially vulnerable regions. The corridor brings together refineries, petrochemical and fertilizer industries, thermal power plants, ports, dense settlements, and the ecologically significant Ennore Creek and associated wetlands. These ecosystems provide critical services, including supporting biodiversity and fisheries, recharging groundwater, regulating floods, and sustaining the livelihoods of local communities. Decades of industrialization, pollution, waste accumulation, encroachment, and wetland degradation have, however, placed increasing pressure on the region’s environment, livelihoods, and disaster resilience.
Prepared for the Manali–Ennore Environmental Restoration and Rejuvenation Council (MERRC), this Five-Year Action Plan provides a strategic framework to guide ecological restoration, sustainable development, and social resilience across the corridor. Drawing on government reports, scientific literature,
secondary data, media sources, and field observations, the plan identifies priority interventions across three phases: immediate actions within 0–1 year, systemic resilience measures over 1–3 years, and transformative interventions over 3–5 years.
The roadmap encompasses pollution and effluent control, wastewater and solid waste management, flood and disaster preparedness, ecosystem and mangrove restoration, urban greening, community health, livelihood enhancement, and climate-resilient infrastructure. It also places strong emphasis on scientific monitoring, institutional coordination, transparency, industry accountability, and meaningful community participation.
The overarching vision is to transform Manali–Ennore into a resilient, ecologically restored, socially inclusive, and sustainably managed coastal-industrial region. By integrating environmental recovery with economic development and environmental justice, the MERRC framework seeks not only to restore Ennore’s ecological systems but also to establish a replicable model for sustainable transformation in other coastal-industrial regions facing similar challenges.