CHENNAI: The corporation on Friday recorded waterlogging on 127 streets in over 50 areas. It has since cleared water from 14 streets and efforts to drain water from the remaining 113 at 53 locations are in full swing.
Corporation officials, this time around, are focused on reducing time taken for water to drain out to the respective disposal points. “Since we now know which areas are prone to waterlogging, we have been taking efforts to ensure water drains faster,” said a senior corporation official.
Parts of T Nagar, including Bazullah road and GN Chetty road, were flooded. When asked why the streets continued to be waterlogged even though the civic body increased the number of disposal points, officials said that now water is expected to drain faster.
“We had studied that the drain time in T Nagar was over 12 hours. Now, we can expect it to drain within 5-6 hours. We also saw that waterlogging has come down from a depth of 1.5 feet to 0.75 foot,” said an official. The city corporation, over the last week, had increased the points of disposal into the Mambalam canal from one to three.
In Pulianthope, another area where water logging has been recurrent, officials had found that drains on either side of Pulianthope high road were narrow, insufficient to carry water to its disposal point at Gandhi canal. As a temporary solution, the top slabs of the drain have been opened to ensure free flow of water. Same thing has been done in Jawahar Nagar, after some areas like Vannankuttai were inundated. “After the rains, we are going to focus on redesigning these drains,” said a senior official. The city corporation now has 847 pumps at its disposal, of which 131 are being used. There are 91 relief centres, where, as on Friday, 620 city residents are being sheltered.