The road widening work the Highways Department has undertaken on Trichy Road at Sungam Junction has the Coimbatore Corporation and environment activists worried.
Their worry is that the 30-metre road expansion work on the eastern side of the Junction to facilitate free movement of vehicles from Puliakulam to Trichy Road will restrict access to the underground vents that lead to the nearby Valangulam tank.
The vent has the tank’s inlet and outlet pipes chambers and if access to it is closed, it will prevent corporation workers from removing silt. And, that will ultimately result in inundation of Sungam and the nearby Gandhinagar, says R. Raveendran of Residents Awareness Association of Coimbatore.
The inlet chamber carries rain water from Nirmala College and areas north thereof and the outlet chamber carries the surplus water from Valangulam through the underground sewer in Gandhinagar to Sanganoor Canal near Meena Estate.
Coimbatore Corporation sources say the department engineers did have an discussion with them. During the talks they registered their concerns as it was an important place, identified as ‘critical point’ by a State disaster response team that visited the city ahead of the 2016 monsoon season.
If the department were to close the vent, the workers cannot enter the chambers from anywhere nearby because the next manhole or entry point was pretty far off. At the place where it has undertaken the work, the depth was around seven feet, providing easy access to the workers to enter and exit at ease.
The sources further say that accumulation of silt may also result in water not exiting Valangulam and that means threat to the bund.
They add that soon they will send a written communication to the department expressing their apprehension and work out a solution.
The Highways Department sources say that they will complete the work in a month. “We are not modifying, changing any of the existing systems at that location. Hence, the inlet or outlet pipes there will not be blocked. We are just ensuring that the drainage does not stagnate there and there is additional motorable space.”
The National Highways (NH) wing of the department had earlier proposed works to widen the road at Sungam junction. However, it has decided not to go ahead with the work either at Valankulam or at the Sungam junction. “We are only widening the road for a short distance,” the official said.
(with inputs from M. Soundariya Preetha)
