BMC scrapes away extra bitumen to avert flooding

KOLKATA: The Bidhannagar Municipal Corporation (BMC) has started chipping away at extra bitumen layers and even out the street levels with house driveways in Salt Lake. This will prevent the rain water from inundating the driveways and flowing into underground reservoirs during heavy rainfall.
In several blocks of Salt Lake, street levels have become higher than that of house driveways due to repeated relaying of roads, which in turn affects the draining of storm water after every bout of shower. Apart from waterlogging, the streets that are four to five inches higher than the grounds are putting motorists and bikers at risk.
The sides of the streets, which connect the entrances and driveways of houses, are being dug up and new stone paver blocks are being placed to make it even with the street levels. Kerb channels that are coming up across streets will drain out the storm water through gully pits. "The street levels are being reduced from the driveway levels of the houses so that storm water can drain out through the kerb channels. This will be done across the areas under BMC," said BMC deputy mayor, Anita Mondal, who is in charge of the roads department.
BMC officials said while taking up road repair work, the extra bitumen layers of the damaged stretches will be peeled off first so that the street levels remain at par with those of driveways. The civic body is going to seek Rs 1.5 crore to Rs 2 crore funds from the state government to take up the repair work of the stretches that have been in a poor shape.