Chennai: this year 1921.
Drive down mount road is quite fun when the road passes with a stretch of water in teynampet – a long curved tank to the west and meet with the tank nungambakkam.
One hundred years later, there was no trace of this spacious waterbodies.
Conversely, the crowded nungambakkam t nungambakkam has developed into a commercial area in its place, because city managers then did not think of usability having tanks in the middle of the city.
This story continues to play in many parts of the city when the population rises and pressure for housing mounts.
Tanks and lakes and floodplains have turned into settlements – legally and illegally.
It has made the city sink after intense rain, at any time, as happened last week.
Rivers Adyar, Kosasthalaiyar and Cooum; Canal Buckingham and two Marshlands Palikarani and Kattupalli – despite shrinking, congratulations.
However, most of these have been occupied when the authorities give priority to development during long-term planning and conservation.
So the city, who did not face many floods during 60cm rain in two days in 1985, now it cannot handle 25cm rain in 17 hours.
This model will not work again if city managers offer better quality of life, experts say.
To deal with heavy rainfall or cloudburst, the city’s requirements need natural channels, lakes, floodplains, swamps along with the efficient drainage network to drain rainwater and store excessive rainwater.
The pump station in the lying low, reclamation of natural waterways, creates a buffer zone on the outskirts of the city and saves what is left of the floodland is a solution, some of them suggest.
At this time, this city will need a strong flood warning system that can monitor real-time monitors in flood-prone areas, identify critical blockage points ahead of rain, check the current drainage network efficiency and mapping slopes, alternative mapping ways to drain water and , Finally, keep our drainage clean.
“You can’t prevent flooding, but you can mitigate it.
Every time the floods occur, we must see that the flow goes to Nallas, or the flow of nature, or rivers and finally to the sea at the very short period of time,” said BV Mudgal, Director of the Center Water resources, Anna University.
SH City is very difficult to evacuate through storm waterways as a natural drainage channel such as wetlands and floodland for cooum and the river is blocked because of urbanization, “said M V Ramana Murthy, director of the coastal center (NCCR).
The way forward is having a drainage network system Integrated for the city.
“We have to see if the drainage system is enough and must come out with a pump station where the drainage system does not work.
We also need to identify critical blockage areas before heavy rain, “he added.
Professor Balaji Narasimhan from the Civil Engineering Department, Iit Madras, suggested that the retaining floods of the Adyar River in the upstream area such as Mution is still newborn, can save the city from the flood.” After you Being under the childaputhur, there is no floodland for the Adyar River.
The government must buy income land in Mudachur and Thirumudivakkam and change it as a floodland.
Every excess of water is better maintained there than coming to the downstream area, “he said .
Some low-lying areas such as velachery need to pump stations, floodgates and levees as topography and soil type does not allow disposal rapid flood waters, said Narasimhan.
Experts urban planning and former bureaucrat MG Devasahayam said, “Removing all encroachment and restoring waterways and lakes The original form is the solution.
“He showed that even the central government and the state did not comb the waterways for example Chennai: Mrs on the edge of Buckingham, a Palikaranai Marshland toll road and elevated toll roads
Chennai: How to save the city from sinking
