Is Delhi losing battle against urban flooding?

As blame game continues over Delhi’s lack of preparedness for monsoon, a drainage master plan by IIT-Delhi, seen as a possible solution, awaits implementation

July 26, 2020 11:28 pm | Updated July 27, 2020 12:35 pm IST - New Delhi

Motorists driving through a waterlogged road after a heavy spell of rain at Raghubir Nagar in West Delhi.

Motorists driving through a waterlogged road after a heavy spell of rain at Raghubir Nagar in West Delhi.

On July 19 morning, the day the Capital received its first generous spell of monsoon showers, locals pulled out a 56-year-old driver from a waterlogged stretch under Minto Bridge where his van got stuck in the heart of the city. But they were too late — he was already dead.

A green-coloured Delhi Transport Corporation (DTC) bus was also half-submerged in the water from which the driver’s body was fished out and fire service personnel had to rescue the people in it. At the same spot, about two years ago, on the morning of July 13, another DTC bus had met a similar fate.

In the aftermath of the July 19 van tragedy, newspapers splashed photographs of cycles and vehicles submerged under the Minto Bridge as far back as 1987 and 1993.

The bridge and the photos tell the story of urban water flooding in the Capital, and of political apathy that has resulted in no respite for the people despite different governments in power.

Experts told The Hindu that different parts of Delhi get flooded every year due to multiple reasons such as over-concretisation, disappearing waterbodies and encroachment at many points on over 3,700 km of storm water drains, which are supposed to take away rainwater. Also, untreated sewage flowing into these drains and the multiplicity of agencies managing them add to the woes.

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Despite the gravity of the problem, a ‘Drainage Master Plan for NCT of Delhi’, seen as a possible solution, is yet to be implemented by the city government.

The plan was commissioned by the Congress-led Delhi government in 2012 and a final plan submitted to the Aam Aadmi Party government in July 2018 by IIT-Delhi.

The last drainage master plan of the city was prepared in 1976, when the population of the city was 60 lakh. Since then the population of the city has increased about four times, according to official figures.

“We have played with the drainage system and we are now suffering its result. This was expected,” said Manoj Misra, former IFS officer and convener of Yamuna Jiye Abhiyaan, a civil society initiative for the river’s rejuvenation.

“I don’t think either the municipal corporation [run by BJP] or the Delhi government [run by AAP] has done anything to solve waterlogging,” said C.R. Babu, professor emeritus at Centre for Environmental Management of Degraded Ecosystems of Delhi University.

Unplanned growth

Mr. Misra said Delhi is “lucky” to have a topography which aids flow of excess rainwater. “It has an undulating terrain and apart from the trans-Yamuna region [east Delhi], the rest of the city, which is the original Delhi, doesn’t have any reason to get flooded,” he said.

“From the central ridge there is a gradual slope towards the east and the west. So, when it rains, water in the storm water drains in the east of the ridge directly flows into the Yamuna. And towards the west of the ridge, water in smaller drains flow into the Najafgarh drain, which goes around and finally empties into the Yamuna,” said Mr. Misra.

The former IFS officer said things changed in the 1980s. “It was then that things got worse. The population started to increase and there was a lot of construction but no planning. The DDA [Delhi Development Authority] was formed in the 1950s, but did not do anything,” he said.

Prof. Babu said it was in the 1990s that flooding became a problem in Delhi. “There used to be a lot of open spaces. In the late ’90s, there was a lot of urbanisation happening and these areas were constructed upon. The change can be seen in the maps of the city from different times,” Mr. Babu said.

Most of the storm water drains, which are supposed to carry excess rainwater, were actually natural drains bearing water from the Aravalis to the Yamuna, according to experts.

Plan in cold storage

Among the master plan’s top recommendations were no encroachment on storm water drains, no sewage flow into them, rejuvenation of waterbodies and a single agency managing such drains. But two years after the plan was submitted to the government, these recommendations remain only on paper.

For instance, the 10-m-wide Najafgarh drain, one of the largest storm water drains in the city, is blackish in colour and smelly as untreated sewage and waste are dumped into it. At the point where it finally flows into the Yamuna near the Signature Bridge, it changes the river’s colour to a darker shade.

“Due to waste and sewage, the water-carrying capacity of these drains has been reduced,” said Mr. Misra.

In the past, rainwater also flowed to waterbodies in low-lying areas of the city. Here, part of the water used to percolate and recharge the groundwater and the rest stayed as surface water. But over the years many of the waterbodies have disappeared due to construction and encroachment, experts said.

“There is no area for rainwater to percolate into the ground due to the level of concretisation. Pedestrian paths have been paved. Instead of this, grass and trees should be planted. Also, avenue trees, which are trees planted along the roadside, have been felled in the name of construction of roads and flyovers. The canopy of these trees absorb water. A lot of that water then drips back into the soil. We need to plant more trees along our major roads,” Mr. Babu said.

Unkept promises

A.K. Gosain, Professor Emeritus of IIT-Delhi who headed the team that came out with the master plan, had submitted a draft report to the Delhi government in 2016. After the government gave its comments, a final report was submitted in July 2018.

Mr. Gosain said in 2018 he had given a presentation to Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal about the plan and he was happy with it.

“The Chief Minister has directed the departments concerned to take concrete steps for the implementation of the report which mentions in detail the specific reasons for waterlogging and flooding during monsoon,” an official statement issued by the Delhi government on August 1, 2018, on the master plan said.

About two years later, an expert committee is still vetting it for feasibility. “The expert committee had asked for our comments and we replied. They have been asking for more comments, but it has not gone beyond it,” Mr. Gosain said.

Currently, the storm water drains fall under 11 different agencies, including the Delhi government’s Irrigation and Flood Control Department and Public Works Department (PWD) and the BJP-ruled three municipal corporations.

“No one cares about the IIT report. No one even remembers it. It is only remembered when there is flood and for the rest of the months, the government just sleeps,” Mr. Misra said.

After the driver’s body was fished out on July 19, by 1 p.m. Mr. Kejriwal said that waterlogging was cleared from the Minto Bridge area and shared a photo on twitter. “We are keeping an eye on more such places in Delhi. Wherever water is collected, it is being pumped immediately,” he said in the tweet.

“Pumping out water and desilting are just temporary solutions. We need systemic changes and the IIT report is the way forward. It has to be implemented,” Mr. Misra said.

COVID shadow

In its 2015 election manifesto, AAP had promised: “Discharge of untreated water and industrial effluents into the Yamuna will be strictly prohibited.”

The Chief Minister said that this year, all agencies, be it the Delhi government or the municipal corporations, were trying to contain the spread of the novel coronavirus. “This is not the time to blame each other. Everyone has to fulfil their responsibilities together,” he said.

But in the days that followed, his party leaders blamed the BJP and the latter blamed the former.

“The system has to be looked at as a whole. There is no point working in some segments and trying to solve the issues, it won’t work. Also, all drains have to be brought under one agency. Right now there is no accountability,” Mr. Gosain said.

Maintenance work

The PWD has jurisdiction over the largest length of drainage in the city, including 1,037 drains. According to a senior PWD official, as many as 454 complaints pertaining to waterlogging have been received by the agency so far in July, while 196 were received in June.

In addition to the desilting of the drains under its jurisdiction, the PWD is also responsible for pumping of excess water from the roads under it through drainage pumps installed at underpasses and low-lying areas as well as through utilisation of mobile super sucker machines, which can be dispatched and utilised at points witnessing heavy waterlogging.

“The leaves of all field staff engaged in maintenance work have been cancelled and the situation at vulnerable points across the city, including the Minto Bridge, is being monitored on real-time basis,” said a PWD official.

The three municipal corporations claimed to have completed the cleaning of most of the drains under them. The East Delhi Municipal Corporation reported to have removed 117% of the estimated silt from 223 drains running 123.6 km. The North body reportedly cleaned 100% of estimated silt from its 192 drains running 112.62 km. The South corporation has reportedly cleaned around 28,000 metric tonnes of silt from its drains out of a target of around 31,000 metric tonnes, based on last year’s estimates.

A senior corporation official said desilting of the drains is the main intervention that can be carried out by civic bodies. This includes cleaning entry points to drains from road surfaces, removal of silt from drains, the official explained.

Most major drains in the city belong to the PWD and are the channels that flow into the drains of the Flood and Irrigation Department, municipal officials pointed out. These drains, the officials claimed, have not been cleaned and as a consequence of that drains owned by the civic body also get clogged. On Friday, mayors of all three municipal corporations attacked the Delhi government, placing the blame for waterlogging on it.

(With inputs from Jatin Anand and Sidharth Ravi)

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