Mumbai: Rain-drain

Fed up with complaints of flooding in south Mumbai and other parts of the island city, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) has decided to conduct a survey of storm water drains (SWD) on a priority basis.

Taking a cue from inundation at the Hindmata circle in Dadar, Lalbuag and Byculla, municipal authorities have said the survey will be conducted to ensure immediate solutions to the chronic problem. During his visit to the areas on June 10, civic chief Sitaram Kunte had found cement barriers erected inside major drains, which caused the heavy waterlogging.

“We will conduct the survey on a priority basis using submersible cameras to know if there are such barriers erected inside the underground SWD. I have already instructed officials to remove barriers at the work sites. But if there were blockages erected inside pipelines a year or so ago, the survey will help us to find them,” Kunte told dna.

The cameras will be used during the low tide period to take pictures and videos of the pipelines. The work is expected to cost around Rs5 to Rs6 lakh to the civic body.
In addition the corporation has also retrieved data relating to locations where contractors were supposed to erect barriers.

Why these barriers?
The storm water drains in south Mumbai and other parts of the city (Colaba to Sion and Colaba to Mahim) are old, and several collapses and leakages do take place. In order to attend to this problem, the corporation has been strengthening them. When a particular stretch of pipeline is being strengthened, contractors, with a view to keeping the area dry, erect barriers on both ends of the pipeline.

Barriers were erected at ES Pattanwala Marg, Dattaram Lad Marg (Lalbuag) and Dadoji Konddev Marg (Byculla). However, the contractors, despite being told, did not remove the barriers, leading to waterlogging  on roads. For not removing the barriers, the BMC has imposed heavy penalty on the contractors besides lodging FIR against them under the disaster management act.

Train woes
By 9pm, waterlogging in the southern part of the route on Masjid, Sandhurst Road and Byculla had forced CR to pull the plug on the CST-Dadar route between 10:35am to 2:10pm as well as the Kurla-CST route on Harbour line between 10:35am to 2:45pm. By 5pm a whopping 340 train services had been cancelled and even the services were running at a snail’s pace with delay of almost an hour. Several outstation trains on CR were rescheduled and some passenger trains were terminated at Diva instead of Dadar. On WR, the slow discharge of water between Mahim and Grant Road in the morning hampered the services with the trains running 15 minutes to half an hour late.

Rains disrupt flights
At 11:51am SG344 (Spice Jet) from Bangalore was made to do a go-around due to poor visibility and heavy rain over the airfield before landing at 12:22pm.

The MH174 and 175 (Malaysia Airlines) KUL-Mumbai (Kuala Lumpur) flights had to be diverted to Hyderabad due to rain and poor visibility. The MH174/175 was delayed by 24 hours because of the operating crew cancelling operations due to technical reasons.

Not the best route
The BEST services were hit by waterlogging in several places all through Sunday morning with the worst being roads near Elphinstone, Sion, Nana Chowk near Grant Road, Hindmata, King’s Circle and RCF-Chembur. While water levels at most places went down by evening, BEST officials said Hindmata, King Circle and RCF-Chembur remained waterlogged till late Sunday evening. A BEST spokesperson said that the undertaking ran 14 extra BEST buses from CST to different parts of the city on the 7, 19, 20, 21, 6, 22 (all limited) routes.