Auroville Matrimandir “the Dream” Lake Now Testing Works going on Matrimandir Around Area

 

Auroville Test Lake

Now a days You may have noticed a bit of construction going on when you visited the viewing point of the Auroville Matrimandir. This is the excavation of what is being dubbed by some “the Dream” lake, as it was envisioned by the founder of Auroville (MIrra Alfassa) as far back as 1968.

The first phase of the Matrimandir Lake consists of the first sector of the Lake itself, whose center line is 110 meters long and about 90 meters wide, it even has a deep zone that's ten meter deep.

This is what we call the Test Lake. Excavation is about 80% complete and sides of this Test Lake are connected to the water channel. The channel forms a complete ring around Matrimandir 7 meters wide, 1 meter deep. And shaping of the channel is almost complete. In the coming weeks a liner will be placed inside, to make it waterproof.

This material is 2 millimeters thick and if it is protected properly it said to last for at least 100 years. By the next summer monsoon time it is hoped that the channel will be filled with water. This water will come as runoff, from the inner gardens of the Matrimandir itself and the pathway. But the Test Lake is not yet ready to receive that water until the waterproofing has been done. At the moment, since the last heavy winter and June, there is still very high ground water, almost 1 meter of standing water in the uncovered lake. So at least another two months until the water level has dropped sufficiently to complete the laying of the material. So it looks as though the Auroville Matrimandir Test Lake will not be finished before summer 2023.

The lake can have a huge impact on water conservation in terms of knowledge and the technologies that are being used. In Tamil Nadu, there is a vast history spanning thousands of years, of artificial lakes to water Paddy fields, however from what information has been collected there has never been a lake of this size, which has zero percolation. So it will be very interesting to see how this type of Lake Project, could be duplicated in other areas of India.
This Article by TUBE THAMBI 

Photographs Copyrights by Pondicherry Arun