Residents in several village panchayats in the city’s suburbs are worried about the possible impact of this year’s monsoom.
Arasankazhani, Perumbakkam, Kelambakkam, Padhuvanchery, Kovilampakkam, Sunnambu Kolathur and Keelkattalai were submerged in rainwater for several weeks during the December 2015 floods.
In order to avoid a repeat, residents of the southern suburbs are urging local authorities and the public works department (PWD) to take action against encroachers on the water channels and remove hyacinth stalling the draining of water.
Residents of S. Kolathur have submitted a petition seeking the District Collector’s intervention to remove encroachments on surplus water channels running in their area.
The channel carries water towards Kaiveli on Velachery Main Road. With a number of encroachments having come up of late, space for the channel has shrunk, leading to constant flooding of localities in and around S. Kolathur and Kovilampakkam, they said.
Last month, the LIC Nagar Residents Welfare Association appealed to the Kancheepuram district administration to crack the whip on encroachments that were shrinking the width of the channel and strengthen the bund on both sides.
“The substance of our grievance was that encroachments along the channel should be removed and that the bund on both sides should be strengthened so that even during the monsoon, they do not give way. Each time this happens, the thickly populated residential neighbourhoods nearby are flooded,” said an office bearer of the association. When the poor condition of the roads and other civic issues were highlighted during gram sabha meetings, the Kovilampakkam panchayat arranged for dumping of debris on the entrances of the street, which has further aggravated the issue, said an entrepreneur from LIC Nagar.
In many of the newer localities around Tambaram, including near Arasankazhani and Perumbakkam, residents are stranded during heavy bouts of rain in waist-deep water. Residents said locating the water channels and deepening them could help prevent flooding.
The district administration conducted a meeting on ‘disaster preparedness and prevention’ a couple of days ago to discuss these issues and action is awaited, said a revenue official. St. Thomas Mount block officials said they were co-coordinating with Public Works Department to clean up the water channels.
