When will MRC Nagar’s sewer lines be unclogged?

CHENNAI: Despite having a sewage pumping station less than a kilometre away, residents of MRC Nagar often find their toilets and backyards flooded with sewage due to clogged sewer lines.

Residents complained that ever since high-rise buildings started cropping up, the age-old sewer line system present underground, could not withstand the mounting pressure due to the extra wastewater generated. As a result, even during summers, many low-lying individual houses find untreated sewage regurging and flooding their houses.

“When MRC Nagar first got its drainage system, only about 80 individual houses were connected to this system. As the high-rise buildings started coming up here, their sewage was connected to the same system. At some houses, sewage overflows through their toilets and floods their entire backyard,” said K Narayanaswamy, one of the first residents of MRC Nagar who has elevated all his pipe lines and bathroom connections to avoid sewage inundation.

Residents said untreated sewage was being redirected to storm water drains in the locality by Metro Water authorities as a temporary solution for this problem. When Express visited the locality, the present storm water drain near Janaki Avenue, which was being reconstructed by the Greater Chennai Corporation, was brimming with raw sewage. Kasthuri Avenue, Janaki Avenue, MRC Nagar Main Road, and South Beach Avenue are some of the affected stretches.

Residents said after meeting with Metro Water officials several times, authorities had promised to set up a small scale pumping station within MRC Nagar on empty OSR land. “Three years ago they came up with this proposal, but no concrete steps have been taken so far to provide a remedy for us. A few weeks ago, officials said they were awaiting funds and the pumping station will be built before 2019 monsoon. We are all fed up with this recurring problem,” said Aasha Muralidharan, a long-time resident.

S Rajamani, former head of CLRI, who is a resident of South Beach Avenue, said for gravity flow to be kept at a minimum and for sewer lines to not infiltrate into the groundwater table, a new pumping station is the only solution. “MRC is a flat area with most part of the drainage system, more than 30 years old. Only a new pumping station with new sewer lines can be a remedy for this overflow problem,” he said.

A senior Metro Water official said that the detailed project report for the new pumping station was being drafted by the board for future needs of the locality. “Currently, there are no such problems as we are carrying out regular repair works and in a few streets, a leak in the pipe might have caused sewage to enter the storm water drain,” said the official.