Whydid thecityflood this yeartoo?bmctofindout
PERMANENT FIX To appoint technical consultant, focus on waterlogging spots
MUMBAI: The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) will appoint a technical consultant to understand reasons for waterlogging in the city and suggest a permanent solution. This year, BMC has pumped 17,145 million litres of water from Mumbai during waterlogging.
“We are appointing consultant for Mumbai to find a permanent solution to waterlogging in problematic spots. This will be an extensive survey, with special focus on chronic flooding spots and low-lying areas. We need to check if a permanent solution can be found, such as deep tunnelling,” said a senior officer from the stormwater drains (SWD) department.
The consultant will have technical and engineering expertise in SWD along with prior experience of handling such projects. They will be given a list of chronic waterlogging spots, including Hindmata, Gandhi Market near Matunga, Chembur Colony and Andheri subway, for the study.
The decision comes on the back of allocating and spending dedicated budgets to find solutions to waterlogging at 273 spots across the city, over the last four years. The officer said, “Despite our efforts, waterlogging happened in the city this year too.”
After the monsoon of 2018,
BMC tried micro-planning to deal with flooding in the city and the SWD department was tasked with studying chronic flooding spots individually and come up with personalised solutions, in addition to cleaning water entrances and laterals, and desilting drains. However, waterlogging has remained a recurring problem.
On August 4 and 5, Mumbai experienced very heavy rainfall and various parts of the city experienced severe waterlogging, including locations that usually do not see flooding, like Babulnath, Girgaum chowpatty and Nariman Point in south Mumbai. Waterlogging was reported at nine prominent locations in the island city, four locations in the eastern suburbs, and three locations in the western suburbs. As in 2019, the water took several hours to drain, though the flooding may be partially due to the city recording its highest ever August rainfall 1974 on August 5.
BMC’S 2020-21 budget allocated ₹912.10 crore to the SWD department. The civic body had declared that during the 2020 monsoon, only 24 waterlogging spots would remain since the rest had been dealt with over the past three years. SWD department has spent ₹2,903.28 crore for capital expenditures including repair and cleaning of drains and water laterals, nullah desilting, widening, repairing manholes, etc, between 2016 and 2019. However, during the lockdown, BMC lost out on crucial months for its monsoon-preparedness work and was unable to complete fixing over 40 waterlogging spots.
AMID LOCKDOWN RESTRICTIONS