Residents demand early completion of work to provide drainage disposal facility

The residents of R.K. Naidu Layout in Ward 13 took up the issue, both collectively and individually, writing letters to the Coimbatore Corporation.

Pre-stressed concrete pipes kept ready for UnderGround Drainage work behind R.K Naidu Layout atVenkitapuram in Coimbatore. PHOTO: K. ANANTHAN

Residents of R.K. Naidu Layout in Ward 13 want the Coimbatore Corporation to complete at the earliest the work to provide a proper drainage disposal facility for the area.

The work had been pending for long because the Corporation had not made proper arrangements in the past and the area shared borders with the Government College of Technology on the southern side and Tamil Nadu Agricultural University on the western side.

This prevented the Corporation from connecting the drain to a drainage disposal system, said S.M. Subramani, president, R.K. Naidu Residents’ Welfare Association. The lack of the disposal system led to a situation where the sewage flowed and stagnated in the Government College of Technology, rising objection from the college management.

The residents too took up the issue, both collectively and individually, writing letters to the Corporation.

For the civic body, though, the problem was obtaining permission from the Director of Technical Education and the Department of Agriculture to take the sewage through the college and the university.

Permission

After bureaucratic delays, the Corporation recently managed to obtain permission from both to take the sewage to a natural drain, Chunnambu Kalvai, which is northwest of the layout.

The Corporation had begun the work by placing pipelines in the area. The plan was to take the sewage underground, without affecting the agricultural lands.

However, R. Pradeep Kumar, a resident, said that the Corporation’s move was ill conceived because the civic body had planned to take the sewage against the natural gradient.

When the natural slope was from north to south, the Corporation had planned to take the sewage south to north to reach the natural drain. The zigzag alignment of the pipeline would only lead to stagnation, he said and suggested that the Corporation should take the sewage north to south to Marudhamalai Road or the southern side of Thadagam Road.

Municipal sources, however, said that they had carefully studied the project and that it would not lead to stagnation of water.