The Case of the White Water, Black Water and Brown Water
In the year 1978, the CMWSSB (Metro Water) was spun off from the Corporation of Chennai and became an independent department. It came to be in charge of water supply and sewerage, namely the white water and the black water.
The Corporation retained storm water drains, namely the brown water. In addition, it retained the work of laying and maintenance of roads and other constructions. Storm water drains and roads were built through tenders, contracts and contractors, and accounted for enormous cash flow. These projects were undertaken sporadically and on an ad hoc basis.
The CMWSSB on the other hand had permanent structures with occasional additions. It was also beset with problems of maintenance on a round-the-clock, day to day basis.
The CMWSSB in a way outwitted the Corporation by conveniently using storm water drains as sewer lines, rather than doing the work of maintaining and upgrading the sewers. If not for storm water drains, the people of Chennai would be wading through ankle deep sewage on their roads every day.
Both the Corporation and CMWSSB blithely assumed that the old channels of sewers and storm water drains built nearly a century ago in the British era had infinite capacity and would remain adequate for the present and future. As a result, rain in the last three decades has been causing floods in several localities. Sewer lines are clogged and there is extensive overflow from manholes. Massive road cave-ins have been reported when these old lines break down.
Recently, CMWSSB has announced a major revamp of the sewer lines in the city after a study and recommendations by an expert body, which will take three years to implement.
The Corporation also seems to have reached a standstill as far as rainwater management is concerned. Flooding of several areas is now the norm. Water enters homes and buildings, taking days to drain, causing widespread suffering and loss to citizens. The main canals in the city to drain rain and flood water are choked with debris, garbage and encroachments. As desperate measures, the Corporation has tried to shunt the water from one area to another, with even worse results. SWDs are built in haste with no proper survey or planning and the construction itself is of varying quality, creating more trouble.
It is obvious that the problems of the white water, black water and brown water have got out of hand, and the Corporation and CMWSSB seem to have reached a point with no clear solution or plan of action in sight. They appear to be blind to the major causes of flooding.
In the last three decades, road levels in the city of Chennai have risen by two to three feet. This is apparent in every locality where older buildings and houses have, in effect, sunk far below road levels. This is the major and primary cause for flooding during rains. To expect all the rainwater in the city to be drained through inadequate storm water drains is irrational and impractical. In these circumstances, roads are the longest and widest channels to carry rainwater to the nearest water body and need to be sloped towards them to enable faster flows. Prior to 1990, this was how rainwater found its way to the sea.
Is there any way out of this impasse?
Let me now indulge in a Utopian dream. This is when the roads, water lines, utilities and all related units come under a single government umbrella department named Roads, Utilities and Services, RUS in short. The city would be divided into zones and each zone handed over to a reputed private company, which would be responsible for the building and maintenance of
- Water mains
- Sewerage lines
- Storm water drains
- Pavements
- Roads
- Conduits for utility cables
- Street lighting
And anything else on, under and on the sides of the roads.
In the era of permit, licence and quotas, production and trade had languished. Free market is reported to have brought about a boom in productivity in several walks of life today. Likewise, by bringing in private companies to various zones of the city, the Corporation and RUS will not be burdened with problems they can no longer handle.
It took the Corporation several decades to realise that collection of garbage in the city had reached gargantuan proportions and the work needed to be outsourced. Several private firms were engaged, effectively on a trial-and-error basis, until the work became more or less streamlined.
In the same manner, the building and maintenance of underground channels for the white water, black water and brown water can no more be dependent on the vagaries of tenders and contracts awarded by government officials to private contractors with no uniformity or supervision in the quality of construction or maintenance. Privatisation in the construction of utilities as noted above, under one RUS umbrella, might rescue and redeem the city of Chennai from flooding and sewage.
Once that is in place, the fogging machines will go into disuse as there will be no mosquitoes in free-flowing storm water drains, sewage will be treated and there will be boats sailing on the Cooum and all the freshwater canals in and around the city. There will be no more flooding anywhere as all the roads would have been re-graded and maintained at the levels they were twenty-five years ago.
Sujatha Vijayaraghavan
Venus Civic Exnora
Chennai Connection
You can take a man out of Madras but not Madras out of the man. When I heard at a carpentry workshop in New Zealand that its proprietor had been to Madras in the early 1970s, I jumped at the opportunity to report the matter to MM. Coppice Crafts is Bill Blair’s baby. He is a woodworker, mind you not a carpenter, who grows willow and handcrafts trugs (fruit baskets) at Oamaru, a seaside town on the Pacific coast, on the Queenstown-Christchurch route in South Island. He was at work that afternoon late this February when we walked into his cabin in a desolate spot. A traveller at heart, he had visited Madras, reaching India by road from Afghanistan and Pakistan. Among the many place in Mera Bharat, he dropped in at Madras for a week or so. My probing did not yield much as Bill was travelling from place to place to place and had caught dyssentry in Nepal. He gave me a nugget though. He took back a Shiva statuette carved from sandalwood while looking around in Madras. Incidentally, he quietly praised our craftspeople who work wonders with their hands. In this connection, he shared that he loved the tea served in earthern cups (kulhads) he had in rail stations in the Northern and Eastern parts of the country. I went through a high looking at his trugs as opposed to looking at the ubiquitous merchandise in supermarkets, sadly even in souvenir shops, made in countries other than NZ.
T.K. Srinivas Chari
Palmerston North