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Rs 5,000 crore stormwater drain projects languish

Despite the Chennai corporation spending Rs 5,000 crore City remains inundated

Chennai: Despite the Chennai corporation spending Rs 5,000 crore in the last 10 years on half a dozen projects to build stormwater drains, Chennai remains inundated. It began in 2005, when the Chennai Metropolitan Development Authority (CMDA) gave a set of recommendations to ensure a flood-free Chennai.

The recommendations included widening the middle stretch of Buckingham canal and removing encroachments along the waterways. Most of the 36-odd recommendations have not been implemented.

“Chennai will flood until the recommendations made by the CMDA in 2005 are implemented,” said a senior IAS officer, who has been a policy maker for several flood mitigation projects. “Till recommendations, like widening the middle stretch of Buckingham canal or converting a part of one of the major canals into a reservoir, are not addressed, government funding and the corporation’s engineering will continue to fail during heavy rains.”

The corporation, in its annual budget, had, since 2006, been allocating annual funds of Rs 80 crore to Rs 120 crore for strengthening the existing storm water drains and to construct new structures.

In 2009, the corporation announced the expansion of Chennai and an annual budget of '300 crore was sanctioned for 2011-12, to strengthen the infrastructure in the extended areas. That was when they went in for pre-cast stormwater drains.

“Floods are not a curse, they are a natural phenomenon and it’s high time that the concept of stormwater drain augmentation, spending crores of money, be in the past. The focus should now shift towards canal and river widening and stormwater drains need to be connected to reservoirs and water bodies, wherever feasible,” the officer said, reiterating that stormwater drains can provide only temporary solutions and failures.

“We may not have achieved international standards, but things have improved in pockets of north Chennai, like Pulianthope and Vysarpadi,” said former corporation commissioner M. P Vijayakumar, who handled the city when 2005’s flash floods occurred when the corporation evacuated 30,000 people and served food packets for over 3 lakh people affected by the deluge. In 2005, Chennai recorded 24 cm of rain in a day, and since then, the situation has improved, but it is a long way to go as the city is getting concretised and expanded on all sides, he added.

Corporation commissioner Vikram Kapur said that the situation had improved. There was no waterlogging on Sunday and Monday and these drains were effective for up to 10 cm of rain. The Slum Clearance Board had also agreed to vacate the encroachments along the canals.

“The new drain system was designed in 2005 and we have established the proposed design and this design can push only 10 cm of rain on any particular day,” he said.

Regarding the concrete roads creating waterlogging, the designing pattern is under study and efforts are on to improvise water penetration, he said, adding that he was unaware of the canal and river widening proposals.

“The terrain of Chennai city is flat and the average level of the land is only 2.5 m above the mean sea level (MSL) and this is the reason that Chennai needs a strong storm water network and the Corporation should have done better,” said former mayor M Subramanian. “As a mayor, I have seen the problem getting shifted from one area to another.

Flooding, as a whole, cannot be addressed in a short span of time. Without the co-operation of other stakeholders, like the PWD, Metro Water and the people, waterlogging cannot be addressed and the present government has failed in the co-ordination part of the exercise.”

( Source : dc correspondent )
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