Nagpur: Due to several ongoing infrastructure works and haphazard planning, more areas in the city face the threat of flooding this year, reveals a survey by Nagpur Municipal Corporation’s fire and emergency services department. The department has identified 70 such localities that are prone to inundation during monsoon.
Interestingly, the NMC’s administrative building is no exception. On Wednesday, Team TOI found waterlogging in the car parking area of the administrative building. Sources said with no proper drainage facility, water can be found accumulated in the basement even if it rains moderately.
In 2018, the fire department has identified flood prone spots and roads using inputs from the city and traffic police. Due to ongoing cement road works and the increased height of the roads, the number of localities in the list of low-lying areas has increased by over a dozen, the study shows. The new areas included in the list of flood prone are Shankar Nagar Square, Ujwal Nagar, Alankar Talkies, Sevadal Nagar, Raj Nagar, Ashok Chowk and Medical Square.
Most spots identified are either situated in slum areas or congested parts of the city, while some parts are close to Nag or Pili rivers, the study stated.
According to the study, the highest number of low-lying areas has been identified under the jurisdiction of Narendra Nagar fire station. Here, the fire department identified 22 flood prone areas and they included Ladikar Layout, Trimurti Nagar, Shanti Niketan Colony, Shatabdi Chowk (Manewada Ring road) and a few parts of Laxmi Nagar near Aath Rasta Chowk. It is followed by Ganjipeth and Sugat Nagar fire stations with 14 each flood prone spots.
TOI visited many low-lying areas and during interaction with the citizens and shopkeepers found that negligence in drain management, blockage of inlets and encroachment are some of the reasons for flooding.
“As many such areas, including some of the flood prone spots, have no drainage facilities, there is a need for revised mapping to understand existing challenges,” a senior official from NMC’s public works department admitted.
Many low-lying areas in Narendra Nagar and Sugat Nagar have no stormwater drains, the official said.
“Blockage of secondary drains, bad planning of layouts and construction has resulted in rainwater from several upstream localities flooding low-lying areas. Shankar Nagar is one such example. Also, there is more flow of rainwater into drains owing to increased concretization, but the carrying capacity of the drains has remained the same over the years,” said a health department official.
“With fund crunch dogging its civic infrastructure projects, the NMC has been in a scramble to identify funding sources to complete missing links of stormwater drains in various parts of the city,” the senior PWD official added.