CHENNAI: Five years after the city Corporation’s Public Health department identified 1.6 lakh illegal sewage connections to city’s storm water drains, not only does the city Corporation now claim that no records of the study exist but also a second enumeration carried out recently claims the city merely has 461 illegal connections. It was reported in 2013 that the department identified 373.23 km of the drains as being clogged with sewage. With no records on what action has been initiated to clear and penalise the connections, a senior Corporation official said that a recent assessment put the number at merely 461, all of which, he said, have now been plugged.
In response to an RTI application filed by a member of Arappor Iyakkam last year, seeking a list of the 1.6 lakh illegal sewer connections, the Corporation said there was no record of such a list. While the study carried out in 2013 was widely reported in news outlets and formed the basis of the RTI query, when Express contacted a senior Corporation official, under whose purview the storm water drain department falls, he said that he was not sure if such a study was made. However, the RTI response said the process of identification was started with a private consultant and that it had checked 37,100 premises for illegal sewage connections in SWDs.
“After the verification, it is found that 461 premises are letting sewer lines into storm water drain illegally,” the response, in March last year, stated.Even as senior Corporation officials said that illegal connections have now been plugged, the RTI response stated ‘there is no record’ for the query on the ‘actions taken to plug illegal sewer lines’ from 2013-2016. Sewage flowing in storm water drains gained special focus after the 2015 floods, when experts said that the capacity of the storm water drains to carry flood water was severely affected by sewage. Secondly, storm water drains carrying sewage serve as breeding grounds for mosquitoes throughout the year, whereas they are meant to remain dry except during rains.
In a 2017 amendment to the Chennai City Municipal Corporation Act, 1919, the fines for illegal connections were fixed at RS 5,000 for ordinary (ground+two floors) residential buildings and Rs 10,000 for ordinary commercial buildings. The fine for special (ground+four floors) was fixed at Rs 25,000 for residential buildings and Rs 50,000 for commercial buildings. Whereas for multi-storeyed residential buildings, a fine of `1 lakh is to be imposed and Rs 2 lakh for commercial ones.
A senior Corporation official said that the cases have been referred to the Chennai Metro Water Supply and Sewage Board (CMWSSB). The RTI response said that the CMWSSB would, in turn, conduct division-wise awareness camps and advise people to get proper connections within a stipulated time period.