Cooum
| Cooum | ||
 The Cooum in Chennai |
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| Data | ||
| location | Tamil Nadu ( India ) | |
| River system | Cooum | |
| source | at Tiruvallur District | |
| muzzle | near Fort St. George in Chennai in the Bay of Bengal Coordinates: 13 ° 5 ′ 0 ″ N , 80 ° 17 ′ 0 ″ E 13 ° 5 ′ 0 ″ N , 80 ° 17 ′ 0 ″ E
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| length | 65 km | |
| Reservoirs flowed through | Chembarambakkam Lake | |
| Big cities | Chennai | |
| Navigable | No | |
The Cooum ( Tamil கூவம் IAST Kūvam [ ˈkuːʋʌm ]) is an approximately 65 kilometer long river in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu .
The Cooum rises near a village of the same name in the Tiruvallur district , flows in an easterly direction and flows into the Gulf of Bengal in the city of Chennai (formerly Madras) . Above Chennai, the river is dammed into a lake by the Kesavaram Dam. The water is used to supply the city of Chennai and the amount of runoff is greatly reduced. The course of the Cooum river is narrow and meandering . Within Chennais, the Cooum flows through the city center and flows into the sea near Fort St. George . In Chennai, several thousand people live in precarious conditions in slums on the banks of the Cooum.
The Cooum is heavily silted up and highly polluted, especially in the area of the urban area of Chennai. During the dry season, the river hardly carries any water and is almost exclusively fed by untreated sewage. There is almost no oxygen left in the water of the lower course of the river, but there are high concentrations of heavy metals. While the Cooum was used for fishing in the past, there are no fish in the river today because of the heavy pollution. A project is currently being funded by the World Bank to improve water quality.
