The Hindu 18.09.2017
Storm water drains ineffective as rain leaves city under water
Roadways
turn waterways:Stadium Junction (left) and Mavoor Road (right), two
main points in Kozhikode city where storm water drains were set up, were
left inundated in the rain on Sunday.S. Ramesh KurupS_RAMESHKURUP
Rs. 15-crore project was expected to solve problem of constant waterlogging in the heart of the city
The
much hyped storm water drainage system set up in Kozhikode over a year
ago seems to have had little effect, going by the flooding witnessed in
the heart of the city, following heavy rain on Saturday and Sunday.
Mavoor Road and Stadium Junction, two main points where storm water
drains were set up, were left inundated in the rain.
Traffic hit
Traffic
was disrupted across the city due to heavy rain and flooding. People
were seen wading through water overflowing from drains.
The Rs. 15-crore storm water drain project was expected solve the constant waterlogging in the heart of the city.
Waterlogging
in the mofussil bus stand junction has always been a headache for the
Kozhikode Corporation and the traffic police for decades. The storm
water drain project was executed specifically to solve this problem.
The
50-year-old drainage system in the city was unable to handle the volume
of water during the monsoon. New pipelines, designed in consultation
with the Centre for Water Resources Development and Management, with
enough capacity to accommodate the water, were laid under the roads as
part of the project.
Road work
It took the Kerala
Sustainable Urban Development Project (KSUDP) almost two years to dig up
half of Mavoor Road and several other roads in the city to implant
pipes that could carry the rainwater straight to Connolly Canal. The
junction was partially blocked in April 2016 for almost a month to
construct the connection between the separate pipelines.
The
drainage system has been connected to the existing drain under the
Nayanar Flyover so that water could be discharged into the Connolly
Canal near Arayadathupalam.
Work on the storm water drain was
completed by the end of 2016, but parts of the city continued to be
flooded, during the onset of monsoon in June.
Mayor Thottathil
Raveendran had clarified at the time that the corporation was in the
process of clearing the silt from the drains and that it would be opened
into the Connolly Canal the next day. “Soon the drain will be
functional and there will be no more waterlogging on Mavoor Road,” the
Mayor had said.
However, the situation continues to be the same three months later.