Chennai: The city corporation and Chennai metro water are facing an unusual problem this monsoon as groundwater level has reached a saturation point. With groundwater recharging up to the road surface, subways and basement areas in the low-lying areas have started behaving like springs.
The deluge has recharged groundwater to road levels. The departments are now working on strategies to bale out the water and sewer in interior roads. According to corporation sources, groundwater in Saidapet, Guindy, Velachery and Adyar had risen in the recent deluge.
“Whenever water was baled out from the basement area, the stormwater just returns and for this reason the Saidapet subway was kept closed till Thursday morning affecting our business”, said
K. Arockiam, a local auto driver.
Despite draining stormwaters using high power pumps, subways are slippery and private building basements are still receiving water. This often chokes sewerage adding to the existing woes, a metro water engineer in Central Chennai said.
When contacted, a senior Metrowater official said the department was aware of all technical challenges that had emerged during this downpour. To address the new challenges, metro water, managing director B. Chandra Mohan had formed a core team to micro map such issues and they were being addressed on a war footing. Road cuts to bale out logged storm water, deployment of more staff and super suckers to ease sewer flow and roping in additional staff to attend to public complaints were the measures. Further, staffers were prohibited from availing themselves of casual leave during this period, the official said.
There were issues related to water hydrology at Mogappair, Srinagar colony and they had been addressed. Normalcy is returning in other areas, he said. “The water in the ground comes from infiltration, but this flood situation should be used to study thoroughly water geology of Chennai, so that in future sewer and storm water issues can be handled more scientifically”, said civic activist R. Govindaraj of Exnora International.
Stagnant water affects power restoration
Chennai for the last two days has been recording a maximum temperature of 30 degree Celsius with sunshine helping government departments to restore normalcy. The regional meteorological centre has withdrawn the heavy rainfall warning for Chennai and northern Tamil Nadu for next five days. However, the Tamil Nadu electricity board is still finding it difficult to deal with complaints of non-supply of power as sewage and storm water had not receded in low-lying areas.“Tamil Nadu Generation and Distribution Corporation has earned the wrath of public in our locality. Despite an electrocution death, TNEB engineers cordoned off the transformer near Madras Veterinary College only the next day,” alleged Arani Srinivasan, a local activist. Still several areas in Periamet and Choolai suffer low voltage and power is provided through overhead wires which is a risk. The board employees do not attend to complaints and pass on the buck on city corporation for not draining storm water and sewage, the local residents said.
When Deccan Chronicle contacted the local area engineer, the official admitted that low voltage issues cannot be addressed now as there is water-logging. Our priority is to restore power and not to address low voltage, the official quipped. Voltage fluctuations cannot be treated as a normal problem as it is a threat to electronic equipment like TV sets, washing machines and fridges. There are similar problems at Kotturpuram and power has been temporarily restored only through overhead wires, which often gets snapped when heavy vehicles enter interior roads, said a Kottur resident.
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