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Is city’s monsoon readiness a mission impossible?
A severe deficit in urban governance, coupled with a disconnect between citizens and state in matters of civic infrastructure have raised concerns whether Chennai is prepared, by any standard, to face yet another monsoon.
By
migrator
migrator
Chennai
Soon after Chennai floods turned into a deluge in December 2015 resulting in death and destruction, city’s civil society mobilised into a ‘Citizens Platform’ and went through several brain-storming sessions. Participants, numbering over one thousand, were either victims of the deluge or had plunged into rescue and relief work when the state apparatus stood still. They represented diverse sections of society from various parts of Chennai, Kancheepuram and Tiruvallur districts.
Out of this intense interaction a consensus evolved that the deluge was caused by a combination of factors, most important of which are exponential urban sprawl, serious failure of the water resources management, poor maintenance of water bodies, huge constructions encroaching on its waterways and floodplains and the failure of disaster mitigation measures. The Chennai-Tiruvallur-Kancheepuram region is drained by five non-perennial rivers–the Araniyar and Kosasthalaiyar in the north, the Cooum and Adayar centrally and the Palar in the south.
Even over the limited gradient available in this landscape, nature has created several pathways through which flood waters pass to eventually empty into the Bay of Bengal. Over centuries people living in the region have assiduously built thousands of tanks and channels to provide rainfall’s right-of-way (natural drains) and storage and harvest the same for use around the year. Numerous marshes/wetlands such as Velachery, Pallikaranai, Perumbakkam and Thoraipakkam are natural holding areas for flood waters to drain via underground streams.
In December 2015 most severe flooding happened wherever the natural drainage was blocked and obstructed by large-scale construction, forcing the surging water to `back-up’ and consequently enter with great force into areas normally not prone to flooding like KK Nagar, Ashok Nagar, Saidapet, T Nagar, Mudichur and so on. Slums in shanty-structures on the banks of rivers or canals do not block the water but often get washed away in a flood. But these are the first to be targeted for eviction and demolition because they are the weakest and most convenient scapegoats. But the huge and permanent structures by government and money-bags which obstruct the natural flow of water and change the direction of the flood, heavily inundating densely populated areas are left untouched.
Rescue efforts being carried out by military personnel
Mega-projects promoted by government or money-bags illegally extract huge amounts of water from the rivers, streams, canals, tanks, wetlands and other associated common lands they are built on. They also release sewage, industrial effluents and other toxic wastes into these water bodies or wetlands and dump garbage or other scrap on these common lands. Despite clear evidence, rarely any action is taken to remove or demolish these largescale encroachments that grossly violate planning and building regulations as well as environmental protection and pollution control laws. Chennai Deluge-2015 was directly linked to such mind-less sprawl and destructive development that had converted green cover into grey concrete. It appears as if none of the demands (see box) has been acted upon except some cleaning-up/ desilting of storm-water drains as is evident from the outpouring of citizens and groups at the Conclave –“Kelu Chennai Kelu”,-a Public Hearing on the state of Chennai’s waterways, and its preparedness for the upcoming North-East monsoon conducted by Arappor Iyakkam on 28th August 2016.
This conclave was attended by over 1200 people, including large number of students, from Chennai Metropolitan Area and around with their representatives presenting the current issues and the urgent steps that needs to be taken by government agencies. An Expert Panel heard the presentations and came out with its findings and specific recommendations. The most worrying aspect that came out of the Conclave is that Chennai is still significantly ill prepared.
NGOs and volunteers
Far from being “Flood-Safe”, we are not even “Monsoon-Safe”, i.e. even if the city receives average rainfall, the state of our water carriers is such, that it will lead to water-logging, traffic snarls and disruption of daily life. The city is ill-equipped to deal with heavy rainfall, and if the rainfall is close to the levels received last year, there is a high risk of deluge repeating! Most resident associations expressed key concerns about lakes and major drains near their place being encroached, blocked with garbage and construction debris and waterways accumulated with silt. Insufficient capacity and bad condition of storm water drains, raising the level of roads after flood were highlighted. The Conclave came out with specific suggestions which were more or less on the same lines as that of ‘Citizen’s Platform’. They insisted on transparency and citizen’s participation in flood-preparedness. They also demand that the Corporation should publish a detailed ward-wise map of all storm-water drains in the city, along with their elevation, alignment, original width and depth.
In 2010 Chennai Corporation launched the ‘Safer Chennai Campaign’ to officially demonstrate city’s participation in the UN International Strategy for Disaster Reduction as part of ‘Making Cities Resilient’. Corporation then had evaluated itself on ten criteria: i) Organisation and coordination to understand and reduce disaster risk; ii) Budget for disaster reduction; iii) Prepare and update risk assessment plans; iv) Invest and maintain critical infrastructure that reduces risk; v) Assess and upgrade the safety of all schools and health facilities; vi) Enforce realistic, risk-compliant building regulations and land-use principles; vii) Ensure education programme and training on disaster risk; viii) Protect ecosystems and natural buffers to mitigate floods; ix) Install early warning systems and emergency management capacities and x) Ensure that the needs of survivors are placed at the centre of reconstruction. Except (ix) Corporation gave itself lowest grade of 1 and 2 meaning poor and low! Even for (ix) it was only grade 3! Since then things have been going further down-hill.
Hence, the deluge. During the Public Hearing it became obvious that many of the issues being raised were not new, and had been raised many times in the past, sometimes for years. If these had been acted upon, the deluge could have been prevented. While civil society volunteers are struggling to get the voice of the people heard, the money-making industrialists, big and small, are bemoaning in isolation without the courage to speak-up. All they would say in solitude is that reaching out to the government is a tedious task and there is a “Chinese wall in every department in Tamil Nadu.” One of these bluntly stated: “We would sink if December 2015 repeats.” Sum and substance of these deliberations and discourses is that there is a huge urban governance deficit and near-complete state-citizen disconnect in Tamil Nadu. Both needs to be urgently repaired if the Metropolis is to be safe and liveable.
The writer is a former urban administrator and a managing trustee of SUSTAIN, an NGO
CITIZENS’ WISHLIST
Based on people’s inputs, ‘Citizens Platform’ placed these demands before the government in April 2016
- Frame a visionary, regenerative water security policy and implement the same by prioritising the retrieval, rehabilitation, protection and maintenance of all water resources, associated common lands and water management structures.
- Halt the forced eviction of slum-dwellers, until a comprehensive relocation and rehabilitation policy for these groups is drafted in consultation with them.
- Identify large-scale encroachments by permanent structures constructed in water-bodies, watercourses, their catchments, floodplains or associated common lands and other prohibited areas and have them removed.
- Clear all obstructions such as accumulated construction debris or garbage and weeds from all types of water-bodies, waterways, storm-water drains and de-silt them.
- Undertake a review of largescale projects under-construction or proposed to be sited in inter-tidal zones, sand dunes or other coastal common lands to prevent adverse environmental impacts including the threat to water security.
- Halt all illegal dumping of solid and liquid wastes by sewage treatment plants and other buildings/institutions into water-bodies and waterways and construct ecologically sound sanitation facilities.
- Impose an immediate ban on the production and use of plastics in all form and adopt zero-waste management practices.
- Revive and expand rainwater harvesting to harness run-off from paved surfaces of roads, restore feeder channels and link storm-water drains to temple or other tanks and strictly implement rainwater harvesting in all government buildings and campuses.
- Review and prioritize the use of water for all segments to yield a graded scale of water consumption that sets limits and imposes obligations on mega-consumers, without compromising on essential water needs of the general public.
- Set up disaster management infrastructure from state level down to local nodes at ward and neighbourhood level and make them functional.
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