Monsoon is approaching but city roads are in a bad shape and stormwater drains are far from flood-ready. Unfinished stormwater drains remain open across various pockets, as Greater Chennai Corporation (GCC) has not built silt catch pits. Newer neighbourhoods are bracing for a bad monsoon this year.The civic body has left the stormwater drain open in multiple spots in Anna Nagar Second Avenue from Thirumangalam to Roundtana. Key junctions haven’t been connected. While contractors say that Tamil Nadu Generation and Distribution Corporation Limited (Tangedco) isn’t helping them shift key electrical junction boxes, GCC too has not coordinated with the department.
Chennai received 46cm rain from Dec 3-5, 2023, flooding several neighbourhoods.
Arcot Road remains dug up along the Kodambakkam and Valasaravakkam stretches with work happening in bits and pieces. The situation in KK Nagar’s PT Rajan Salai is similar. In Pulianthope, an entire road has been cordoned off near KP Park tenements due to drain work.The city now has three ongoing drain work projects encompassing 1,093km, of which work on 1,045km has been completed. Two projects are nearly five years old, funded by Asian Development Bank (ADB) and KfW Development Bank respectively—they had faced multiple hiccups due to funding issues, tendering malpractices, gradient problems and coordination between departments.Now, work on about 48km is left, stretched across densely populated neighbourhoods such as Tiruvottiyur, Manali, Madhavaram, Thiru Vi Ka Nagar, Anna Nagar, Alandur, Perungudi and Sholinganallur areas. Metro work on Arcot Road has also affected existing pipelines and stormwater drains at several locations. GCC is heavily depending on pumps in these areas.Besides this, the civic body is yet to finish missing link work in 68 of 105 identified locations. Though the length of the network where work is pending is less, the impact is significant, as even the smallest bit of unconnected drain can sink an entire neighbourhood.Without finishing the remaining work, even the 1,000 dewatering motors procured by GCC will be of limited use. The corporation is also yet to desilt at least 500km of its overall 1,682km of drain network—only 59% of silt catch pits, which act as an entry point for water to enter drains, have been desilted.Former Thiruppugazh flood committee member S Janakarajan said, “SWDs only carry sewage, industrial waste and solid waste, and they end up in the city canals and rivers instead of treatment plants. When there’s heavy rain, the drains overflow. Capacity must be studied,” he said, adding that the drains must be built according to a masterplan that maps watersheds and the natural slope.He added that the civic body has been demolishing existing stormwater drains in narrow streets and rebuilding them. “This is unnecessary. A big street now has a drain which has low capacity,” he added.“Cut-and-cover drains are being used as patchwork to fill missing links,” said Bhuvana Raj, head of Eco Watch, a volunteer-led environmental monitoring group formed by the Federation of OMR Resident Associations (FOMRRA). “When project reports are not publicly available, how can we be confident that the drains being built are scientifically designed?”“We must not wait for nature to stress-test the stormwater drains. They must be built with adequate capacity. Drains are diverted to the Buckingham Canal, which itself is not desilted,” she said. TN chief secretary M Sai Kumar has directed officials to finish all northeast monsoon-related works by Sept 30.
