After the 2015 deluge, Chennai has come to fear the fury of the northeast monsoon. Last year’s rains only exacerbated apprehensions of the city’s residents, as even core parts of the city were inundated for days, despite relatively lower amounts of rainfall. Chennai Corporation officials say that this year, the total rainfall in many areas was nearly 33 cm in a three-day period, whereas last year, the city was inundated during a three-day rain period in November, with only 17 cm of rainfall.
Some intense showers over a 24-hour period in north Chennai this time around, resulted in over 30 cm of rainwater. Though the rainfall itself came in bursts, thanks to staggered showers, the Greater Chennai Corporation, with its extensive stormwater drain work this year, might have just yet won the first round.
It had to. The flooding and failure of the last monsoon, could be laid at the door of the AIADMK government that had just been voted out. But no longer, and certainly not this year, when Corporation Councillors had been elected after a gap of a decade, and were directly answerable to the residents of Chennai.
The DMK has a reputation of enhancing city infrastructure in Chennai every time it is in power. The city got a veteran bureaucrat in Gagandeep Singh Bedi as Corporation Commissioner, and work towards flood prevention was set in motion with Chief Minister M.K. Stalin holding meetings and inspecting ground work, as the drain infrastructure was found to be in shambles.
Re-engineering work
A view of the strom water drain work in on K.K.Nagar Main Road in October | Photo Credit: Velankanni Raj
After the first spells, the efforts of the government seem to have paid off, as traditional flooding hotspots remained drained, and flooding was restricted mainly to parts of North Chennai. This year, the Corporation focussed on engineering, bringing technology including precast causeways, modern machinery for cementing walls and top slabs, increasing the number of manholes for better flow and to facilitate better desilting, and reducing the distance between manholes from 5 metres to 2.5 metres.
“Immediately after the 2021 December rains, we noted down the main areas [of flooding]. In January the feedback from the Thiruppugazh committee [an advisory panel on mitigation and management of flood risks in the city] was available. In the next two months, we prepared the estimates, got it vetted by the committee, called for tenders and issued the work orders in April,” Mr. Bedi explained.
“Smaller projects usually take about 12 months and bigger projects in north and south Chennai will take three to four years to set right. But in this case, we have finished most of the smaller projects in six months, having started in April. This was possible because of political will, a series of coordination meetings with line departments, close inspections and technical follow-up of the quality of the work thrice a week. We also got the feedback from a technical team led by IIT Madras,” he said.
The seat of the local body -- Ripon Building was not flooded this year. Nor were core areas including T. Nagar, Adyar, Mylapore, Ashok Nagar and Velachery. Another aspect that has helped, is the constant feedback from the elected representatives – councillors.
In South Chennai, the Kovalam project was taken up with German funding of ₹150 crore, and the work done so far has helped to an extent. The Water Resources Department has also issued a new standard operating procedure for preemptive release of water from eight tanks in areas such as Korattur, Porur, Ambattur and Kolathur during the monsoon to prevent flooding. The Highways Department has done its bit in areas like Kasi Theater to Adyar and WallTax Road.
“The fear factor which used to be in the minds of the people has all gone and the city is much better, normal life has resumed. There is further [work] to be done to make the city more resilient. You know Rome cannot be built in a day. It takes time to build infrastructure,” says Mr. Bedi.
‘Too early to judge’
The consensus amongst residents is that it is still too early to judge the effectiveness of the Corporation’s work towards the monsoon. Residents believe that a better comparison with the 2021 monsoon can be made in a few weeks. However, in the showers the city has received till now, some areas have fared better than they did last year and others have continued to remain prone to water-logging.
It is true that Metro Rail construction work and other civic projects across the city have exacerbated the situation, resulting in slush and rough roads, and restricted access. Another common problem that has resulted in water entering residential compounds is the higher level of the roads as compared to houses.
“Repeated re-laying of the roads has resulted in even the stormwater drains being at a higher level than our houses,” says C. Ramakrishnan, president, Federation of Adyar Residents Associations. This makes it difficult for the water to drain and could lead to a mixing of sewage and rainwater.
V.S. Jayaraman brings up the same issue in T. Nagar which consists of older residential buildings. “When I moved into my apartment 40 years ago, the road was four feet lower than the building but now it is the opposite,” he says. During the 2021 monsoon, he was forced to relocate temporarily, as water had entered his ground floor apartment. According to him, the stormwater drains have improved the situation but it is “too early to tell”.
Ramanathan Jayaraman, a resident of Arcot Road, Vadapalani says that the road, which is an important arterial road, is full of potholes and floods very quickly. “We still have no traffic management and it takes an hour to travel one kilometre,” he says.
Rainwater stagnating at the government polytechnic college hostel campus in Dr. Radhakrishnan Nagar, Tondiarpet in Chennai earlier this week | Photo Credit: B. Jothi Ramalingam
Year after year, North Chennai has fallen prey to waterlogging and it came as no surprise to its residents that the same happened this year. Just two days of rainfall severely affected Strahans Road, Angalamman Koil Street, Thiruvika Nagar and Kolathur with water reaching knee-level, and only extensive pumping helped.
On the other hand, West Mambalam has seen a shift. “From having roads untraversable to only a few pockets of stagnation because of sloping roads, the situation has definitely improved”, says Raja Ram, a resident of Vivekandapuram 1st street, West Mambalam. He noted that Corporation officials responded to complaints and cleared water with pumps.
S.V. Radhakrishnan, a resident of NTR Street, Rangarajapuram, says the stormwater drain there has no exit route and overflows onto the road. This comes after the Corporation made changes to it post the 2021 monsoon. “Water is regularly pumped out but we need a permanent solution”, he says.
Going social
If one were to point to one aspect in which the Chennai Corporation has definitely improved, it would be their response on social media or on the field. Residents merely have to tag @chennaicorp and within a short while, they receive a reply followed by swift action.
With over 20,000 workers on the field actively pumping water or clearing complaints, the Corporation is making significant strides towards addressing issues across the city. Regular inspections by Corporation and government officials have kept them abreast with the city-wide status.
Delayed monsoon
Though delayed by nine days, the Northeast Monsoon (NEM) that started on October 29 this year, has had a good run so far. The Regional Meteorological Centre, Chennai has predicted a normal season.
A normal monsoon season has been predicted for Chennai | Photo Credit: R. Ragu
Additional Director General of Meteorology, RMC, Chennai, S. Balachandran said that during the period October 1 to November 1, Chennai had received 413 mm as against its usual 327 mm, which was an increase of 27%.
Senior meteorologist Y. E.A. Raj said that this year, the NEM has made a good beginning. “Sometimes if the onset is very weak it will cause a lot of concern to water managers. Though the monsoon was late, the city had good rains in October. Though the delayed monsoon had caused a deficit in rainfall for the city, this has been corrected in the last few days of the rains,” he said.
As to why the northern parts of the city got more rains than the rest, he said that cannot be explained as rainfall was a very complicated parameter. “In the past too, we have had instances of either Nungambakkam station recording more rainfall than Meenambakkam station or the other way around. But the patterns will get corrected in due course.”
Preparedness pays
The Electricity Department was directed to depute a team of officials to monitor the situation round-the-clock and to attend to faults that occur during the monsoon, and also to disconnect power in flooded areas.
A senior official of the Tamil Nadu Generation and Distribution Corporation (Tangedco) said the Department had started a number of projects for an accident-free monsoon by pruning tree branches, replacing old and damaged poles, tightening the sagging of overhead power lines, increasing the height of pillar boxes and installing new jumpers.
Maintenance work was carried out in more than 330 substations, while 45,672 trees were pruned, 4,725 old poles were replaced, 13,934 insulators were installed, aged conductors for a length of 1,300 kilometres were replaced and maintenance work was carried out in 1,920 distribution transformers.
Waterlogging was present in many places, but not sufficient to affect traffic flow in these areas, said Additional Commissioner of Police, Traffic, Kapilkumar C. Saratkar.
Only three subways were closed for traffic due to waterlogging. “Coordinating with Corporation, we ensured the movement of traffic even in waterlogged roads, even in the nights, by posting personnel,” he said. Mobilising available resources, the police are working hard to fill potholes developed due to the rain, he added.
(With inputs from Aloysius Xavier Lopez, Malavika Ramakrishnan, Deepa H. Ramakrishnan, R. Srikanth and R. Sivaraman)
