The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Chennai News : Watery woes continue for many Chennai residents

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Tuesday, Dec 02, 2008
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Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu - Chennai

Watery woes continue for many Chennai residents

City Bureau

— Photos: M. Karunakaran and S.S. Kumar

NO RESPITE YET: A view of an inundated road at Ram Nagar in Velachery (left), motorists struggle on 100 Feet Road in Vadapalani on Sunday.

CHENNAI: A number of residential areas in south and west Chennai suburbs continued to remain waterlogged on Sunday and people were yet to return to their marooned houses after the recent rain.

Residential colonies at Velachery, Madipakkam, Ullagaram-Puzhithivakkam and Thoraipakkam are under sheets of water.

K. Vidya, a resident of Kubera Nagar Extension in Madipakkam, had to vacate her house with her two kids, as snakes started entering the flooded house. Residents in Ram Nagar and Kubera Nagar in Madipakkam could reach the main road only by boat.

B. Kannan, a resident of Prabhu Nagar in Thoraipakkam, said that water tended to stagnate for months together forcing people to remain indoors. Overflowing sewage and mosquitoes compounded their woes. A few families from Taramani and Perungudi have taken shelter in Taramani and Perungudi railway stations for the past two days.

P.V. Krishnan, a resident of Vijaya Nagar, Velachery, said the reasons for the area being flooded easily were the clay soil, which prevented water from being absorbed, and low level of the land. With numerous developments on the adjoining marshland areas, the residents continued to be at the receiving end.

K. Swamiraj, a resident of Srinivasa Nagar in Ullagaram-Puzhithivakkam, had come up with a plan several years ago to prevent flooding in and around Velachery. He had suggested a tank with huge storage capacity in the vacant space between Karapakkam and Sholinganallur near the Buckingham Canal, to compensate for the reduction in the storage capacity of the marshland. By creating the facility, rain water could be stored during monsoon and sold to industrial units on the Information Technology corridor.

Bad roads

Most of the arterial roads such as Velachery Main Road, Taramani Link Road, Medavakkam Main Road and the Pallavaram-Thoraipakkam Radial Road remain inundated and have started crumbling. Medavakkam Main Road and Taramani Link Road are dotted with potholes and craters. Even a number of interior roads in Velachery, which were re-laid recently, have not escaped damage. Overflowing sewage is posing health hazards for residents in areas such as Sarathy Nagar, Baby Nagar, Annai Indira Nagar, Ram Nagar, Vijaya Nagar, Muruga Nagar and Tansi Nagar in Madipakkam and Velachery. A damaged sewage pipeline on L.B. Road was being repaired.

Water-logging and craters on 100 Feet Road in Vadapalani is proving profitable for two-wheeler and four-wheeler mechanics, who have set up base there. Patch work on city roads were taken up on Sunday by Chennai Corporation workers. About 150 tonnes of hot mix have been prepared for the repairs on dry roads. Other roads will be repaired after draining the water.

About 100 medical camps were conducted at various localities and 1.28 lakh food packets distributed to the affected. With workers of the Municipal Administration and Water Supply department removing encroachments on Ambattur Industrial Estate Road and Officers Colony, water-logging on this arterial road had reduced considerably, according to S. Muthuswamy, a resident of East Mogappair.

(With inputs from R. Srikanth, T. Madhavan and Kannal Achuthan)

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