Improper/incomplete storm water drainage - Pallavaram ponds bridge (Kamaraj Nagar)

Location: Pallavaram Ponds bridge (Kamaraj nagar)

Date: 25-Oct-2018

News article on the storm water drainage work near Kamaragar nagar - The New Indian Express (Madhumitha vishwanathan)

On 14th August, 2018, it was raining continuously from from evening 5pm till 11.30pm. I was already late to home, i left office at around 11.10pm, and as the road was empty that late night I reached ponds bridge by 11.30pm.

Nagarathinam street, kamaraj nagar (Pallavapuram ward no.3)

Usually I take left turn over the bridge towards Saravana stores and will take a U-turn in that signal as I need to go via Thiruneermalai main road, but that day I took right turn towards Olympia grande apartment, near Kamaraj nagar and took a u-turn on my left to connect with thiruneermalai road via Kamaraj nagar. 

OMG! My bike almost sunk in that flooding water, it was difficult for me to guess weather i will fall or not, because this road has a lot of potholes. Then in the middle of the service road I could find some dry place to stop. I could not accept that a place close to GST road is in such condition. All the streets of Kamaraj nagar were flooding in the middle of that night. Few residents were pouring our the water from their permissives.

I spoke to an Auto driver who just came their and was not able to go further as streets were full of water, "This is not new to me, this happen every now and then when it rains", said Auto driver. Even for an hour rainfall this area floods, he added.

Nagarathinam street

Next day we submitted an online petition to gdp.tn.gov.in and also to CMcell portal stating the issue this people facing and requested the officials to fix them. Still the work is incomplete. 

Canal under ponds bridge that takes water to other side of bridge/road.

When asked to local people,

"There is a culvert beneth the bridge which was installed 30yrs ago, which is not spacious to take a large volume of water from one side to another" said Dhamodharan a local resident.

"Not only the storm water drainage canal from Kamaraj nagar, but also the drainage canal from Olympia Grande Apartments and its adjuscent area are all connected here near Kamaraj nagar, this cause a huge volume of sewage/storm water to overflow and cause flood in Kamaraj nagar", said Selvam and Abdul rahman a local youngsters of kamaraj nagar.

"There is a big politics behind this issue, one will blame another and till the end no one will complete the work", said few youngsters of this place.

"A couple of days before officials from Pallavapuram corporation and also from Highway authority came and inspected, but this has happened even before, they will come take photograpgy and will go back and nothing else." Said local people.

There is a biggest question mark, who is responsible for this? who has to do this work? Highway dept, (or) Pallavapuram corp. ? All of them are unanswered.

In the previous government, i.e in the time of DMK the fund of 96 lakh has been allocated for this work, but still no progress seen, say a source.

Currently we are able to see a lot of news on diseases being spread by mosquitoes, such as "dengue" which even lead to death. Already their are several other infection and diseases which are caused due to mosquitoes. Our govt is announcing fine on residents who don't keep their permissive clean and if water stagnation found. But what about these huge stagnation of water in streets and roads which govt itself doesn't fix, who is gonna fine them??