Many of the fire-fighting measures announced by the GHMC Commissioner, M. Dana Kishore, in view of urban flooding crisis faced by the city during monsoons, were take-offs from last year’s study report by a panel of experts from JNTU-Hyderabad.
Though the report was submitted in September last, the civic body has not yet initiated any measure based on it, as implementation of the recommendations would cost ₹5,600 crore, a senior official from the GHMC said.
Land acquisition itself would consume half the funding for the project. “We have sent the recommendations to the State government and are awaiting a decision,” he said.
Emulating chain-linked lakes for draining of rainwater, the panel of experts from the Centre of Excellence on Disaster Management from university’s College of Engineering had suggested a hierarchical connectivity of rainwater harvesting pits, water tanks, flood bypasses and storm water drain network.
Each water stagnation point should thus be supported by 300 rainwater harvesting pits in private built-up spaces and 100 in government lands, connected to six water tanks, the study had recommended.
On the whole, the project would need building of 636 water tanks, besides 2,70,350 water harvesting pits over an area of 780 square km. Of the total, 385 tanks are expected to fall in private lands, which would require massive land acquisition.
The system should be such that excess flow generated beyond the capacity of the rainwater harvesting pits should travel to water tanks. Any excess water beyond the capacity of water tanks should be pumped into the storm water drains connecting to other flood bypasses.
The length of the flood bypasses for major storm water drains are estimated to be over 456 km, while the same for minor storm water drains could be 1,100 km.
The study also innovatively proposes storm water drain pipelines along the central medians, to avoid them being choked by garbage dumped on the roadside. The functionality of the central median is not to curb jay walking, but to control the glare impact generated from traffic coming from the opposite side, it points out, and recommends removal of concrete medians in huge dimensions. To facilitate proper drainage of water into these drains, the study recommends reverse cambering of the road, which may trigger more project expenditure.
