The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Chennai News : Is Chennai ready for the monsoon?

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Aug 12, 2005

Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu - Chennai

Is Chennai ready for the monsoon?

Karthik Subramanian

Officials say this time round they are prepared Activists say encroachments on riverbanks and hoardings still remain

PREPARING FOR RAINY DAYS: Workers clean a waterway at Trustpuram in Kodambakkam, on Thursday. — Photo: S.R. Raghunathan

CHENNAI: : The sights of rain-ravaged Mumbai have flooded the media over the last two weeks. The big question now is whether Chennai is prepared for the monsoon.

The city usually receives heavy rains during October, November and December when the Northeast Monsoon is active over South India. Over the years, low-lying areas, such as Velachery in the south, have been prone to flooding. Roads that do not have proper drainage have been washed away. In November 2002, the city took a battering when it received 35 centimetres over six days.

The Government then promised several relief measures and subsequently the Chennai Corporation commenced works such as desilting canals and using rubberised bitumen for laying stronger roads. The Government also constituted a disaster management committee. The committee is looking into various issues from evacuation plans for people of low-lying areas to setting up relief camps.

Preparedness review

In the wake of the heavy losses due to floods in Mumbai, which received 94 centimetres of rainfall on July 28 , the city's disaster management committee recently met at the Secretariat here to review the preparedness measures. Chennai Corporation Commissioner M.P.Vijayakumar, who is the chairman for the committee, said preparations for the monsoons were nearly complete. "Since 2002, the Corporation has taken up desilting of 16 major waterways and every year we have cleaned up the stormwater drain stretch running up to 769 km. All freshly-laid roads have proper margins for water to drain."

In the last two years, the civic agency has spent nearly Rs.5 crores for desilting. A few projects for this year's works are still pending — work has just commenced to desilt a portion of Trustpuram Canal and a 200 km-stretch of stormwater drains — but officials say that it will all be done within the next month. Through this month, Corporation will also clean up the filters of rainwater harvesting structures in Government establishments and public places. Though the civic agency has taken up desilting and other maintenance works, the question remains whether it is enough to meet the monsoon season.

Bharat Jairaj of Citizen Consumer and Civic Action Group said the Government had still not dealt with important issues such as encroachments on riverbanks, and hoardings. Despite the desilting works taken out by the Corporation, almost all the city's waterways are still being used for diverting sewage.

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