Every time it rain, the residents of Chinnagurusamy Layout in Singanallur have sleepless night. Quite literally. They remain awake throughout the night to flush out sewage that enters their homes from drain outside.
And it was no different during the last rain, which was at least 20 days ago. The level of sewage in the drain kept rising and finally entered the house, recalled M. Rajathi, a resident.
The residents had to take their buckets to throw out the flowing sewage to prevent it from entering the drawing rooms. The residents of the compound kept doing it for over three hours the night.
She said that the residents had to carefully flush out the sewage because the ground would turn slippery with the inflow of slush. There would be packing material, plastics, polythene covers, paper and much more.
The problem of sewage inundation would not end with the night, K. Pappamma joined in to register her complaint. For the next three or four days the residents would be forced to keep cleaning the slush because it would simply not go with just a wash.
In her house, the stagnant sewage was at least knee deep.
The area was prone to inundation because it was an old layout where residents had been occupying the houses for at least four decades. And in the 40 years the difference between the road level and houses had diminished, explained V. Sreenivasan, another resident.
S. Balan, Councillor (Ward 62), said the choked drain not only affected Chinnagurusamy Layout residents, it also troubled those living in Krishnapuram Iyer Layout and a few other areas. The reason for the sewage stagnation and overflow was the narrow space between spans beneath the culverts.
Plastics and other solid waste got stuck beneath the culverts forcing the sewage to overflow onto the road, he said and added that whenever it rained, he would marshal three earth movers to pull out the solid waste at the coking-prone points.
The drain flowed from Hope College Junction on Avinashi Road to the Irugur Tank by passing through Neelikonampalayam and Singanallur.
Sources in the Corporation said that the engineers concerned were preparing estimates after the Mayor S.M. Velusamy visited the area a few days ago and asked the officials to lay new culverts.
They said that the work would start and end soon so that the residents got relief at the earliest.
