The Water Resources Department (WRD) has in the past one week come up with some flood-alleviation measures for the city. At long last, the schemes have taken into account the direction of flow of flood waters and also identified certain areas that are chronically prone to flooding during the rains. These schemes, if implemented well, will bring welcome relief to the city. But, it should be noted that much of the present problems of flooding are purely manmade and so there is no guarantee that even after these corrective measures in place further wilful tampering with nature will not occur. Unless and until we put an end to encroachment and usurping of public spaces, as also unplanned development, these challenges will continue.
The WRD scheme identifies south and west Chennai as being chronically prone to flooding. It plans to build canals at all these places, which will become channels to drain floodwaters to the nearest river/waterway and from there to the sea. Thus at Ambattur it plans a 5km channel to drain water to the Cooum. Similarly, a 6km channel will do the needful at Velachery, draining into the Buckingham Canal. Itrecommends the restoration of Okkiyam Maduvu, the historic channel that has drained surplus water in the Pallikaranai marsh to the sea.
The recommendation of these schemes does not mean we will be flood-free next year. The Greater Chennai Corporation has, it is understood, received the proposal and will contemplate recommending it to the Government. Land acquisition will be a major challenge, and so, in the fullness of time we will have these channels in place and by that time, going by past experience, there will be other manmade causes of flooding. And so we may end up being in the same place after all.
The above comment does not mean we are against these schemes. They are in fact most necessary. But a careful reading will reveal that these channels would have all been rendered unnecessary if we had adhered to traditional drain systems already in place in these areas. Ambattur for instance is in the middle of several interlinked water bodies and the connection between them is all lost owing to rampant construction and development in the intervening spaces. Velachery is a traditionally low lying area connected to Pallikaranai. We have made the former a vast housing colony and the latter has shrunk due to encroachments by private and public institutions. How then can the water drain? And the plan also shows that ultimately, the degraded waterways of the city, namely Cooum, Buckingham Canal and Okkiyam Maduvu are the ones that come to our rescue. Do we treat them with the importance they deserve? No. Even now, work is going on on the elevated Maduravoyal-Harbour road with most of the pillars on the Cooum bed. The MRTS killed Buckingham Canal the same way.
What price then this plan? It has become a necessity as countless lives are impacted year after year by the flooding, no matter how it was all caused in the first place. And so it has to be done. But what happens next? Will we resolve to prevent such manmade disasters in future? Or will our so-called master plans that claim to take into account environmental impact of the city’s expansion just remain on paper while the bureaucrat-politician-builder nexus continues merrily developing more and more high rise, housing colonies and gated communities with not a thought to the future until disaster strikes? Sustainable development has long been forgotten in Chennai and it is time we made that our priority.