New Delhi: City drainage system can only serve 50mm rainfall and more than flooding the system.
This has been revealed by the Department of Public Works report.
Delhi received 69.6mm rainfall on July 19 100mm at 26 and 72mm July on July 29.
Normal rainfall for this month is 210.6mm, but this year 506mm was accepted even though the monsoon arrived very late.
The capital is still operating on the 1976 drainage master plan even though the population has increased multiply.
Officials said the process of implementing a new drainage master plan was ongoing and input from channel management channels had been sent to the Department of Irrigation and Flood Control (I & FC), which was a nodal body.
Overall, 10 agents, including city companies, PWD, DSIIDC, DDA and I & FC departments, manages more than 3,700 km of storm waterways.
In 2009, the Governor of Lieutenant who then Tejendra Khanna asked civilians and all stakeholders to prepare the master plan for the river and drainage systems.
“The last Master Drainage plan was completed in a way back in 1976.
A new plan must be prepared by continuing to remember the city growth scenario that changed,” Former Minister of Main Sheila Dikshit had commented in 2012, while announcing that Iit-Delhi would do so make a master drainage plan The city is very much needed.
Now, almost nine years later, the master plan continues to remain unpaid, while “rapid capital” repeatedly brought to his knees with massive water even with moderate rainfall.
Reports on the limitations of the drainage system also highlight that areas such as walled cities have a system where the waste line also functions as a storm water channel.
In many cases, colonies have developed, but the drainage system has not.
In Pul Prahladpur, the excess runoff from the colony in a 4-5km radius reaches this site.
The place was not designed to take a large volume of storm water.
Yamuna water level is also associated with waterlogging.
When the level rises above 205m, waterlogging deteriorates.
Delhi’s topography prevents gravitational-based flow to the larger I & FC drain that carries excess water to the river.
A senior PWD official said a smaller colony channel was managed by the company, while the water channel along the road that was wider than 60ft was managed by PWD.
“Introduction managed by the company brought excess runoff from the colony to the PWD channel that took water to a much larger water channel such as Barapullah and Najafgarh, which was connected to the river.
When the Yamuna level approached the level of danger, the gate of many wax channels was closed to prevent flow back, “added the official.
Interestingly, PWD has employed three divers to save lives in the event of an emergency situation if the vehicle was trapped in an underpounded underpass.
Delhi relies on drainage plans aged 4 decades
