Wednesday, April 25, 2007

Storm water drains not good enough

nother episode of one rain and water logging stories mushroom this year too. But the million dollar question remains unanswered. Why does our City is too delicate for even small quantity of rain. Here is a answer and reason for such a havoc to blame it upon. Almost all storm water drains in the City which are constructed to channelise the rain water to different valleys are not good enough to sustain the amount of rainfall being received.

Take this example. According to the data available with Meteorological Centre, average rainfall in the City for April in last five years, is approximately 46 mm. This includes a downpour as high as 324 mm in April 2001, and as low as 9 mm in 2002. But Citys kaccha storm water drains built decades ago, are able to sustain a maximum of 25 mm average rainfall per month.

L Sathyanarayana, Chief Engineer, Bruhat Bangalore Mahanagara Palike (BBMP), West zone, said that there is no chance to widen such drains as per the the present rain fall statistics as there is space available in the areas adjacent to drains. "We can only remodel them and such works are being done across the city," he said.

But, why there were no problems of floods in previous decades with same set up around? Engineering experts point out that uninterrupted links between various lakes in the City used to facilitate a smooth flow of rain water in such drains and even during heavy rain there used to be no water logging as such.

"Almost all storm water drains today have been encroached upon by real estate zars. Dumping of waste, mainly in the from of construction materials, has led to the flooding of the low-lying areas," said a senior engineer of the Palike. So, with such a basic hurdle ahead, will the project of "remodelling of storm water drains" yield any fruits? A former BBMP engineer said that if strom water drains in the water logging areas are deepened enough to facilitate the easy flow of water, problems can be solved for a large extent.

"The strom water drains leading to Bellandur lake are not deep enough and cause floods in Koramangala and surrounding belt. If under remodelling project deepening works are done here and if Bellandur lake is de-silted regularly, we can reduce the yearly havocs," he said.

Also, Palikes priority should be to remove encroachment from the storm water drains beginning from the end points of the four valleys namely Vrishabhavathi, Hebbal, Challaghatta and Koramangala.

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