Thiruvanmiyur residents face brunt of floods

But the real problem started once the rain stopped. With basements and even ground floor houses submerged, anyone who could afford a motorised pump started ejecting the excess. Only, there were far too many of them doing this.

“We cannot blame residents as such because they had no other choice. Everyone was pumping out and so if in one place it receded, somewhere else nearby, the water level was rising,” said a resident of first Seaward Road here, who did not want to be named.

There are high rises and expansive individual houses occupying Seaward Road area and other Valmiki Nagar localities in Thiruvanmiyur.

Apartments with deeper basements compounded the problem even more for individual homes nearby. When all this came to a head, it was decided to open sewer manholes to let the stagnating rainwater inside.

It worked but not for long as drain pipes swelled until it could no longer carry an entire locality’s rain water excess. “Silt deposits increased and the drain pipes got blocked in several places. After normalcy resumed, people began using washrooms and the stagnating pipes started overflowing,” said T.A. Subramanian, a resident on third Seaward Road, whose basement was until recently flooded with overflowing sewage and stagnant rainwater.

That was when a few influential residents informed corporation commissioner, Vikram Kapur, of their perils, supported by photo evidence, and action soon followed. “The engineers deduced that the sewage lines had blocked and they asked us to let the water directly towards the beach,” said a resident requesting anonymity.

Thus, as was the case with Palavakkam and a few other beach settlements along ECR, Valmiki Nagar dwellers too went the beach way to settle the issue. Now, there is no trace of sewage in these localities.