Mumbai: Walking in knee-deep water, traffic disruptions with buses wading through flooded spots, waiting drenched on railway platforms for hours, sometimes overnight, has been the plight of Mumbaikars every monsoon.
This year, though, even during the two-week-long incessant rainfall, with even 100 mm of rainfall within an hour, the city didn’t witness many pauses.
To reduce flooding, the BMC tackled 35 waterlogging spots and undertook measures like construction of underground water tanks, pumping stations on chronic spots, desilting work, installation of iron nets and drainage chambers along the roads.
BMC officials said they changed their methodology in 2019 by micro-planning to deal with flooding. They said they studied each chronic flooding spot individually and tried to find the reason why a specific area floods every season. Then they came up with personalised solutions for each spot.
Chief engineer from the storm water department, Ashok Mestry said the city has 386 flooding spots, out of which 282 were tackled last year. While 35 were handled this year, the rest of them (90) will be tackled after this monsoon.
Municipal Commissioner Iqbal Singh Chahal said hard work and sincere efforts have been put in by the BMC to make sure that the city doesn’t halt and commuters aren’t inconvenienced.
Sion resident R Sridhar said flooding in Gandhi Market is now history. Environmental activist Zoru Bathena said, “For years, the lowest part of Santacruz that connects SV Road to Linking Road flooded even when it drizzled. The corrective measure of the BMC have finally solved the issue of flooding on Green Street and Saraswat Road.”
One of the initiatives undertaken this year included underground water holding tanks at Hindmata – the Pramod Mahajan Udyan (capacity of 1.62 crore litres) and at Xavier’s ground (1.05 crore litres). Besides, 15 suction pumps were also set up.
At Gandhi Market near King’s Circle, the BMC installed a mini pumping station with high capacity to disperse water into Bharat Nagar culvert.
Earlier, the area was submerged in two to three-feet water for hours, but this year owing to the pump the rainwater receded faster.
Also installed was a new 915-mt storm water drain connection at Khar West to resolve the waterlogging problem near Jay Bharat society and a 415-mt connection to keep DN Mhatre Road flood-free in Borivali. Besides, 487 additional dewatering pumps have been installed, with their drainage capacity increased from 25 mm to 60 mm rainfall per hour.
In coordination with the railways, the BMC also amped the capacity of dewatering pumps on tracks. High-pressure pumps have been installed at 18 places on the Central and Harbour lines, and at 10 locations on the Western line.
Some other corrective measures include a pump with the capacity of 9,000 cubic metre at Masjid Bunder station and a much stronger one (24,000 cubic metre) at Mahalaxmi station.
Another pump at Chunabhatti railway station has the capacity of 11,000 cubic meters.
Two pumps with a capacity of 3,000 cubic meters per hour between Prabhadevi and Dadar can pump out water and route to the underground storage tanks at Pramod Mahajan Udyan.
Pumps are also installed at six locations between Dadar and Matunga Road and at three places near Bandra Terminus. Pumps of different capacities are being installed at Masjid, Sandhurst, Byculla, Chinchpokli, Parel, Sion, Ghatkopar, Vidyavihar, Vikhroli, Bhandup, Nahur, Shivdi, Wadala, and Tilak Nagar railway stations.
Deputy municipal commissioner Ullhas Mahale told the Free Press Journal, “We have extended the capacity of the existing storm water drainage line. We have also installed high capacity suction pumps and deployed proper manpower and machinery at the right time and at the right place.”
