NOVEMBER 28, 2015

Ignore Hydrology at Your Peril

Chennai floods show the vulnerabilities that arise from the neglect of urban planning.

n the second week of November, flood-marooned people in

Chennai had an unlikely Good Samaritan. The cab service
provider, Ola. As the city struggled to come to terms with its
highest rainfall in 10 years, the cab company pressed in boats
from an aquatic adventure outfit and secured the services of
professional rowers and fishworkers to ferry those stranded in
waist-deepsometimes even chest-deepfloodwaters. Some
boats also supplied food and water free of cost.
The sight may have taken old residents of the city to far less
calamitous times when boats plied on the Adyar River. It may
have evoked memories of the rivers channelsand other
waterbodies. Ironically, Chennai has lost mostif not allof the
waterbodies of old. Media reports quoting the National Institute
of Disaster Management pointed out that Chennai had about
650 waterbodies, including lakes, ponds and storage tanks till
about two decades ago; today it has less than 30. In the recent
floods, the city paid a heavy price for this loss.
A fundamental principle of hydrology says that whenever
there is heavy rain, or a cyclone, natural waterbodies and interlinked drainage systems hold back some water, use that to replenish
groundwater and release excess water into larger waterbodies
oceans and big rivers. Chennais planners and its real estate boom
ignored this axiom. The Velachery area, one of the worst-affected by
the floods, is a case in point. The area that derives its name from
its abundant waterbodieseri means lake in Tamilhas seen a
real estate boom in the last 15 years. A lot of it has come at the cost
of lakes and waterbodies. Velachery today has Chennais largest
mall, the Phoenix mall, that stands on what was once a lakebed.
Chennais Master Plan 2026 does deliver some homilies to the
citys last waterbodies. But it shows little appreciation of their
role as natural drainage. Why just Chennai. Most urban master
plans betray such ignorance. In city after city, waterbodies have
had to make way for real estate. So it is not surprising that most
recent urban floods have become case studies of the perils of
ignoring water courses. Last years floods in Srinagar, for example. A report by the Delhi-based Centre for Science and Environment notes that in the past 100 years, more than 50% of
Srinagars lakes, ponds and wetlands have been encroached
upon for constructing buildings and roads. Real estate has
taken over the banks of the Jhelum River, vastly reducing the
rivers drainage capacity.
Economic & Political Weekly

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NOVEMBER 28, 2015

vol l no 48

As sites for real estate development, a city most often becomes

a flat surface shorn of the demands of topography and hydrology.
Mumbai authorities, for example, had very little inkling about the
antecedents of the Mithi River till the disastrous floods of 2005.
What was once a flowing river had been blocked at every corner;
there were encroachments and constructions on the riverbed and
where the river discharges into the sea. Research after the floods
revealed that the width at the Mithis discharge point had narrowed
to 40 metres in four decades. With every discharge point paved,
the river could not flow into the sea and went into spate.
In Delhi, the airport has gone under water three times in the past
five monsoons. In September 2011, rainwater flowed into the arrival
halls of the airport, paralysing security checks and departure.
And in 2013, passengers had to wade through knee-deep water to
reach the terminal. Both the city and the airport authorities
now concede that Delhis topography was ignored while planning for the airport. Waterlogging stalks the capital, monsoon
after monsoon. A petition before the National Green Tribunal
this year feared that most of the 200-odd natural storm water
drains in the city could have fallen prey to real estate.
The recent floods in parts of South India also show that the
worst fears of climate scientists are coming true. Study after
studyincluding reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Changehas warned of the vulnerability of Indian cities to climate change. The 2014 World Development Report of the
World Bank says Mumbai remains vulnerable to rainfalls of the
kind that led to the 2005 floods. Most Indian states do have disaster management programmesincluding those for urban
centres. But they are heavy on relief and rehabilitation. Disaster
management is yet to find a place amongst the essentials of
urban administration. It is also bedevilled by the corruption
that plagues all other public works in the country. Media reports
have it that in July last year a Chennai Metropolitan Development Authority engineer wrote a confession letter to his superior
detailing how a multi-crore storm water drain project in
Chennai was executed without concrete reinforcements or
cement, but instead with quarry dust. In the past five years,
Chennai has spent more than Rs 10,000 crore on building storm
water drains. But opposition parties in Tamil Nadu have argued
that these multicrore storm water projects failed to deliver
during the recent calamity.
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EDITORIALS

As a warning of sorts to town planners who are making grand

plans for smart cities, Ponneri, a town near Chennai which is to
be turned into one such city, received 370 mm rainfall the
same weekend when Chennai went under water. That was some

130 mm more than Chennai. Ponneri is a little less than 40 km

to the north of Chennai. Still relatively underdeveloped, it
escaped with much less damage. But have those holding smart
city placards learnt any lessons?

NOVEMBER 28, 2015

vol l no 48

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