CHENNAI: Nine months after the floods that ravaged the city from December 1 to 14 last year killing as many as 500 people, it is business as usual. As the plans and blueprints that were prepared remain only on paper, the encroachments on the Cooum and Adyar rivers continue to dot the embankments, land use plans prepared by the Chennai Metropolitan Development Authority are altered arbitrarily and illegal buildings continue to sprout on water bodies.
The deluge has been forgotten, just like the six other major floods that the city witnessed since 1943. A report prepared by Parliamentary Standing Committee on Home Affairs on ‘Disaster in Chennai caused by torrential rainfall and consequent flooding’ has blamed the mafia involved in illegal construction for business and usurping water bodies for real estate business and sought removal of illegal construction on flood channels and river bed.
As per the Second Master Plan report, developments in low lying areas are allowed only when it conforms to standards and after getting clearance from Public Works Department on the measures to be taken to free it from inundation. But this is never adhered to, with buildings in low lying areas in the southern part of the city, like Velachery and Tambaram, being given planning permission by bending the rules.
Despite being hit hard by the floods, the realty sector feels that the prices of land and apartments in the low lying areas including the Old Mahabalipuram Road, Velachery and Mudichur Road won’t be affected.
As a property developer puts it, public memory is quite short. Developers are again wooing the buyers in these areas and the mood is positive.
The primary culprit is the government agencies who relax planning norms and allow the construction of structures of water bodies, said professor S Mohan from the civil engineering department of the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras.
“Velachery was once a lake before being converted into a concrete jungle. It was essential part of flood water drainage. But once houses were built, there was no way the water could go out,” said Mohan. The focus should be to ask the Public Works Department to come out with 100-year flood line data, which will result in fixing the average mean sea level for plinth, he says.
In a critical report that it submitted, the Parliamentary Standing Committee has blamed illegal encroachment and faulty town planning as the major causes behind the havoc that was wreaked by the floods. Most of the existing waterways, reservoirs and tanks are not desilted, and their channels and banks are obstructed with encroachments and structures.
“The unplanned urbanisation and growth of the city has been contributing factors for the floods,” the committee said.
The biggest issue which was lacking was the preparedness to deal with such a disaster. The committee rejected the claims of Union Home Ministry that there could be no preparation for a disaster that occurs once in 100 years. “Instead of putting the blame on forces of nature, we should use advanced technology to fight it out. The National Disaster Management Authority should have established procedures so that vital times are not lost in wriggling out procedural delays,” the committee observed.
“The parameters for safeguarding waterways and water bodies from undesirable developments are incorporated in the development regulations. However, it is amended every now and then with none of the officials claiming responsibility. While ideas are numerous, it just requires the spirit to implement it rather than tinker with it,” said a former CMDA official.