BENGALURU: To prevent the city from flooding due to overflow of Storm Water Drains (SWDs) during rains, the state has ordered the BBMP to do a one-time cleaning of 440 km of drains. Two deadlines have been set: January 15 for drains where works have commenced early and January 31 where work has commenced later.

The city has a total of 643 SWDs running along a length of 842 km. However, only 440 km of drains have retaining walls and presently, work is on in those drains.Chief engineer, SWD, BBMP, BS Prahlad told CE that the deadlines would be met. “We want to ensure zero-flooding in the city in 2019. The state has offered us `40 crore for this one-time work. We have divided the SWDs into nine packages. Work on three packages began on December 1 while in the other six packages, work began on December 15.

A total of 159 km requires intense desilting. Once the cleaning of these 440 km is completed by January-end, it will be maintained regularly using robotic excavators,” he said. There are 70 rainy days in Bengaluru in a year, spread across March-end/early April, May-end/early-June and scattered throughout September/October. “Of these, only five or six days are really nasty. It is to tackle them that we need to maintain our SWDs,” Prahlad said. He added that vulnerable points where bad floods have occurred have been identified with the help of the Karnataka State Natural Disaster Monitoring Committee and have been given priority.

Removal of trash in the drains, solid waste and silt is being carried out presently. In case of narrow drains, they are being widened to avert flooding.The city has another 402 km of drains that did not have retaining walls. “The state has allocated `8,015 crore for various BBMP infrastructure works of which `1,576 crore will be spent for development of these SWDs. They would be widened and will be ready by 2021,” the official added.A unique system has been adopted to track the progress. “Confabulation cameras are being used which help us monitor the works on a real-time basis,” he added.