CHENNAI: While the monsoon is expected to arrive on Sunday, water experts and environmentalists are not quite convinced over the city’s preparedness to face its fury. They laid down medium and long-term needs to improve Chennai’s disaster resilience.
Decoding the Chennai urban and peri-urban hydrology and ecosystem, Prof S Janakarajan of the Madras Institute of Developmental Studies (MIDS) has brought out a document, which was released the event ‘Restore Chennai’ organised at SBIOA School, which talks about key areas of concern and what needs to be done to help Chennai beat extreme weather event like the 2015 floods, which claimed 571 lives and caused losses to the tune ` 20,000 crore.
“The period immediately following extreme events is often one of total disorder and panic-driven. As the monsoon approaches, I can see people in many locations already under the grip of severe fear. In the name of development agenda, there has been a mindless urban expansion shrinking the natural habitats like wetlands, lakes and other ecological sensitive area. This has also resulted in massive migration from rural to urban areas and created a lot of slums. For example in Chennai, 35 per cent of the total population lives in slums and they are the ones who get affected the most in case of extreme events,” Janakarajan said.
He said that Chennai can’t per se be flooded because it is geographically very uniquely placed. The city has three waterways (rivers) that run through the city, something which no other city in the country can boast of.
“We have Kosasthalaiyar river running through the northern part of Chennai, the Cooum river takes care of central Chennai land the Adyar caters to the southern Chennai and further south, Chennai is blessed with the Palar river. And there is the Buckingham canal which cuts across all four rivers in close proximity to the sea, but unfortunately these major drainage systems are badly maintained and the original bed widths of the rivers have been reduced by two-thirds besides losing their gravity and velocity due to silt,” he said.
Janakarajan highlighted that waterbodies in Chennai and its suburbs have a capacity to store 80 tmcft of water, if maintained properly and the city’s annual water demand is 11 tmcft. Last monsoon, the run-off into sea was a whopping 300 tmcft of water.
Jayaraman of Arappor Iyakkam said his organisation had formed six citizen charters in worst affected areas which are monitoring and assisting the works being carried out by the government and also giving them feedback. “Around 150 local residents and volunteers have participated in the social audit of specific high flooded areas,” he said