Chennai: Sewer
overflow and mosquito menace complaints are likely to come down in at
least a thousand areas in the city in a few months. But, that would be
possible only if everything goes according to Chennai Metro Water’s
(CMWSSB) plan.

CMWSSB along with the city corporation has
jointly undertaken a comprehensive citywide rectification project to
contain sewer discharge into stormwater drains causing sewage overflow
during rain.

Chennai corporation identified around 1,000 such
places where individual sewerage service connections running
perpendicular to stormwater drains rupture and thereby discharge sewage
into the drains.

CoC has submitted a list to CMWSSB for
rectification. Metro was reported to have done an assessment and set a
three-month deadline to arrest sewage discharge. The idea is to end the
repair ahead of the ensuing northeast monsoon that normally starts by
mid October so that sewer overflow would not occur and floods would
recede easily.

Most of the 1,000 vulnerable areas involve
individual residential service connections. Attributing the problem to
rupture in old sewer pipelines, resulting in direct discharge of sewage
in to storm water drains, senior CMWSSB officials said the board would
bear the cost in case of the poor households if the repair involves
minor pipe replacement, which should be the case in most of the
identified areas. 

However, the repair cost would be collected in
the case of affordable households or if the repair involves more than
just a meter of pipeline change, officials added.  The project could end
Taramani-like horrors where a child slipped into an open stormwater
drain and died last week.

The reason cited was worse than the
tragedy itself as CoC officials said the child would not have died if
there were no water, in the instant case sewage, in the stormwater
drain.