Old drains can’t cope with growing suburbs

From today, HT will look at local-level monsoon preparedness in the city. Citizen groups, residents have been roped in to audit local works. Here’s what they found in H West ward.

The civic body has failed to develop its existing infrastructure of storm water drains and sewerage pipes to keep pace with the growing housing and commercial structures in the suburbs, found a panel of citizens that examined the BMC’s pre-monsoon work in the H-West ward on Tuesday.

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Three spots were covered under the audit, where the rain-readiness of the suburbs was marked a low 3 out of 10. This means residents of areas in Bandra, Khar and Santacruz are likely to undergo problems of localised flooding this year as well. "The carrying capacity of sewage pipes has not being increased, so sewage is carried through storm water drains, reducing their capacity for floodwater and causing them to overflow," said Rahul Pai, secretary, Jai Bharat Society, Khar.

Ward officials said they would soon begin the micro-tunneling work to replace the old sewer pipes and increase their capacity.

"There are number of railway culverts that drains in the ward are connected to. If these are cleaned, water-logging would be controlled to an extent," said Prashant Sapkale, assistant municipal commissioner, H West ward.