Residents fearful of another 2015

V Rajesekaran, a resident of Varadharajapuram on the outskirts of South Chennai, shivers at the sight of heavy rainfall. Floods even in other cities revive memories of the week-long deluge in Chennai in December 2015.

"Twenty months on, the disaster still haunts us. Nothing much has been done to prevent yet another deluge. The promise to deepen and widen the Adyar river remains on paper," he says.

A delayed decision to open the sluice gates of the Chembarambakkam tank coinciding with a cloudburst on December 1, 2015, led to the overflowing of the Adyar that flooded the entire south of Chennai.

"The Public Works Department took up works to deepen and widen a 16-km stretch of the Adyar at the cost of Rs 19 crore this year. We found out that the contractor has done nothing. We have complained to authorities twice, but no action was taken. If the surplus water is released from Chembarambakkam, we will again be flooded," he says.

The Tamil Nadu government's plan for a Real Time Flood Forecasting and Spatial Decision Support System in Chennai will take two more years before it's implemented, officials say.

Barely a month is left for the onset of the northeast monsoon, but the Greater Chennai Corporation is yet to complete de-silting of storm water drains and canals.

The corporation began manual de-silting of the city's 1,894-km storm water drain network at the cost of Rs 10 crore two weeks ago. Like other cities, Chennai is also suffering from storm-water drains carrying untreated sewage.