English Article

Season of Floods

Tamil Nadu’s cities need long-term solutions to avoid the monsoon woes

The ongoing spell of heavy rain in Chennai has again exposed the vulnerability of the city, a coastal metropolis with a flat terrain, to floods, and raised more questions than answers about the Government’s preparedness to deal with the northeast monsoon. The first spell of heavy rain of 21 cm, mostly in the early hours of Sunday (November 7), caught everyone by surprise. Despite storm water drains and waterways running to about 700 km being cleared in the last four months, no tangible improvement was seen in the problem of inundation. The nightmare of the 2015 December floods haunted Chennai in the backdrop of the authorities monitoring the release of surplus water from the reservoirs on the outskirts. Even as the city was struggling to get back to normality, there was a depression in the Bay of Bengal, which crossed the coast near Chennai on Thursday. This time, the city did not experience very heavy rainfall but several suburbs such as Tambaram and Red Hills recorded over 22 cm of rain. In the last four days, other parts of the State too were at the receiving end of the monsoon. Nagapattinam, one of the backward areas of the Cauvery delta, was battered after 31 cm fell in a day