GURUGRAM: The GMDA will start work to build a new arterial stormwater drain that will run along the Southern Peripheral Road and Dwarka Expressway, a solution it hopes will end the chronic waterlogging problem that rears its head every monsoon and has led to events like the monster jam of 2016 when flooded roads led to a citywide traffic gridlock that lasted almost an entire day.
The GMDA has come up with a plan to divert rainwater from Badshapur drain, which is the city’s main stormwater channel, to the new drain through a culvert at Vatika Chowk. Both drains together will, engineers hope, solve the problem of rapid water accumulation in the city whenever there is a heavy spell of rain and allow the runoff to drain quickly through the channels into the Najafgarh drain and further on to the Yamuna.
Work on the comprehensive drainage plan, which has been approved by the chief minister and whose other key component is to build check dams in the Aravalis to check the flow of water from higher ground into the city, is likely to begin in the next couple of months. The drain will begin at Vatika Chowk and culminate at railway culvert 61 on the Dwarka Expressway.
The spots where the check dams are going to come up are still being decided by government agencies.
“The portion of the drain that runs along CPR (Central Peripheral Road) will be built by the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) whereas the remaining portion will be built by the Gurugram Metropolitan Development Authority (GMDA). Once this drain is completed, a certain amount of water will be diverted to the new drain from the culvert, proposed at Vatika Chowk, reducing pressure on Badshapur drain,” said GMDA chief engineer Pardeep Kumar.
GMDA officials had requested NHAI to construct the drain along the CPR. The culvert at Vatika Chowk will be built at an approximate cost of Rs 20 crore.
Besides the construction of the drain along CPR, the metropolitan development authority has also proposed building of drains along Golf Course Road and from Wazirabad to Kosht Nala. This will help contain waterlogging along Golf Course Road at areas such as AIT Chowk and Suncity. Golf Course Road was inunda-ted this monsoon, leaving its planners shocked because it did not figure in the last of critical areas vulnera-ble to waterlogging. It also highlighted the increasing troubles of managing rainfall in a city whose drainage infrastructure is in a sha-mbles and whose natural draining channels have been destroyed because of the construction.
“Our effort will be to arrest rainwater in the Aravali hills by developing check dams and reviving existing check dams. This will help reduce the water runoff,” said Kumar. He added that the forest department had been assigned the task of identifying existing dams and reviving them and building new ones wherever required. A survey in this regard is already under way and the total cost of building and reviving check dams has been estimated to be around Rs 15 crore.
The city’s topography and the state of its drainage system have combined to create a problem that several interventions since the 2016 monster jam have not been able to solve. One of the major projects undertaken was increasing the carrying capacity of Badshapur drain so that rainwater could drain faster through it but that too did not help.
As a result, civic agencies gear up for monsoon by deploying pumps to drain out water while police have to deploy in large numbers on the streets to keep traffic moving. The plan to build check dams in the Aravalis will, therefore, be as important as building the new drain because the two-pronged solution the the GMDA has drawn up is likely to be far more effective when implemented in combination.