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“Unlike other essential goods, like clothing, shelter, or food, we take cheap or even free water for granted. It often takes a crisis, such as a major drought or flood, to spur investment and policy reforms in improving water security” … Jose Angel Gurria
José Ángel Gurría Treviño, also known as Ángel Gurría, is a Mexican economist and diplomat. From 1 June 2006 to 31 May 2021, he was the secretary-general of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, UNA. Mexico, though is on the opposite side of the world yet resembles a lot by size & weather with our country & on many fronts we are far better placed than her yet when its water crisis, may it be floods or drought we are on the same page as a country! That's true, the media has the shortest memory beating even Gajani (ask Amir khan what it means) so the flood related to seatbelt & road safety receded fast as the news about India’s Tech City got flooded with real flood! All newspapers carried images of the best of the localities in waist high water & people who have never put their designer footwears in the cars except BMW, PORSCHE or Merc & such had to ride in tractors. Millions (read as aam Janata) were secretly smiling & happy looking at those pics actually as indeed nature is the best equalizer & what better example than flood where some chunk of water makes all the society looks the same, right? But the question is at what cost we pay to learn this basic law of nature & how many more years we will be paying the fees of these lessons which has kept us in the same class of the school names life, is my point of sharing!
And by the time I started scribbling pointers for the Tech City Bengaluru floods, in just two ours on a Sunday eve, our very own Smart City (Pune, of course, who else!) got flooded with media dancing to prove how useless we are as a city or civic body & how the urbanization has destroyed the entire city & nature etc etc. Well, first all the media survives on the advertisement revenues of the very same urbanization is first thing & second, to blame development or urbanization or the builders for floods & damages they bring along is like blaming a healthy growing boy for the expenses of the food it consumes! Confused, ok, when we blame urbanization for the disasters like flooding then actually urbanization is best sign of development as from all over the country & world people are coming to settle at Pune (and Bengaluru) & its these people who creates employment & trade in the city which makes lives of millions a shade better & obviously everybody related to these migration & trade will need a home which we blame as urbanization! Problem is not with homes (read as real estate) , the problem is with the way they are allowed to develop & that’s not the job of any single builder or group of the builders but the entire society which makes the system we call govt, is my point of sharing!
Coming back to rains, flash floods (is it really) & water clogging in the cities, let’s see what happened in Bengaluru & Pune as urbanization is bound to increase at these two centres & so are such incidences, whether to call them as natural incidences or allow them to become disaster, is the aspect of my sharing! Geographically both cities are on Deccan Plateau but Bengaluru is nearly on centre making the region (read as city) mostly plain while Pune has a slight upper hand as its on foothills of Western Ghats with hills & slopes running towards downstream of three rivers as well it has five dams on upstream of these rivers all of which ensures proper management of rainfall however heavy it may be on the upstream of Pune, an advantage which Bengaluru lacks. What this means is, with heavy rainfall Bengaluru being on plain land to clear or say drain the rainwater becomes a problem as water flows only by gravity (read as rainwater) & for that you need slopes, is simple logic. While the entire Pune is slopes so it’s easy to drain the rain water naturally with time, those who remember the Panshet Flood (or disaster) will understand as the entire city was under water but the floods were gone in merely a day actually. And on the other hand, these sloped grounds of Pune creates another problem for water management of Pune region & that is, damage this flowing water can do! The slope of the roads & the momentum the rainwater gets due to these slopes are like a mini tsunami & this is where the underground rainwater drains fail as the water in speed doesn’t wait to get collected in the rain water system or chambers at most places & we think we are failure in making rain water drains, which is not the case!
Ok, we have identified the problem, what next? First accept that this is a problem created over d years and we won't find a solution overnight but a systematic (and dedicated) approach is a must.
1. To start with, lets video shoot of all the serious spots during rains, if we can do aerial drone shoot then better as it will be documentation for ever as well will help us in tracking the inflow of the rain water at all these spots which will later help us to arrange its outflow or say draining out arrangement. This has been effectively done in cities like Singapore and Kualalampur like Equatorial cities with vast urbanization & daily rainfall. Also, in cities like Los Angeles (USA) & in Valencia (Spain) rain water tracking surveys have been done to deal with flash flood problems occurring repeatedly.
2. Let’s get out of the conventional idea of closed Rain water drain lines & think about open drains/channels to carry the run-off! I know many experts (in Pune we have ample of them) may frown over my suggestion but take a look at our history of rainy season & these so called rain water lines have always failed the city because they are never going to solve problem in tropical country like ours as except some 30 days of good rains all 330 days they run dry and with our civic sense as well population keeps getting clogged by every possible garbage which even god's can't control or clean, is a fact we should tell to media & people. Take a look at what we have found in the rain water pipelines, including carcass of domestic animals to plastic bottles, everything's there except the rain water, accept this fact that not even God, leave apart PMC can do anything about this aspect of our civic sense (senselessness, is what I meant)! Or till then we can use treated water of ETP/STP to wash or say keep the Rain water drains free flowing every day so the drains can be free to carry rain waters, is one suggestion. As well make a rain water dept with separate setup to look after existing networks as well to create a new network for rain water drains! (this is suggested by one of my frd in PMC only).
3. Let’s work on creating surface drains/ channels for letting the flash flood or runoff towards nearby streams, nallahs, rivers (all existing natural drains) which are ample in Pune due to our geography as well start increasing water carrying capacity of these natural drains with proper lining/ safety walls at PMC’s cost as most of the societies won't spending so much or won’t be in capacity to do so. The advantage is these open drains can be easily cleaned or kept clean (if we can keep them free from encroachments or other use) as well even if rainfall is heavy, they can carry added water unlike closed rain water drains which backs of the water, creating more chaos, we have witnessed often!
4. Most important make a policy (and implement it) to keep open earth cover to absorb the rain water in the ground, use existing rain water drain chambers as charging point by making bore wells in them (Gera Developers has done it), this will help in reducing the runoff (runoff is rain water which actually flows or collected on ground once the water falls from sky as rain). Every society must have water charging points in their premise as well an arrangement of making all the rain water in the respective premise being collected at these charging points so only the excess rainwater will be let out on roads as runoff & again a system to see that this is being followed!
5. As the Pune city is on & around hills, a major problem is runoff flowing down in all directions from the hills which needs to be controlled especially when this flowing water meets the roads. This can be done by series of bund walls along the slopes of hills as well creating water bodies at foothills. Major hurdle is space & permissions, well you want to save the city or play a blame game, you have to define, right? Identify all the spots at least in govt lands & make as many lakes we can create to accumulate rainwater & percolate it in ground. This has been done in Florida State in the USA.
6. Create a series of bore wells or ground water charging bores along both sides of roads which are getting water logged regularly. This will help reduce the quantity of rain water at such spots.
And finally, a system dedicated to execute, monitor & improve all above aspects of managing rain water must be in place which is missing at present! To conclude all I will say is, lets accept the fact, we may be the Tech Capitol or the Smartest City but we can’t control quantum of rains falling down from the sky (thankfully) but we can definitely find a way to deal with this rainfall & that is what will decide what we are, a Smart or a Dumb city!
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Sanjay Deshpande
Sanjeevani Dev.
Please view my sharing about real estate in Pune at You Tube link below..
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4xX7eopH5o&t=5s
Please do visit my blog links below to read about real estate & home buying!
https://visonoflife.blogspot.com/2021/09/choosing-right-home.html
http://jivnachadrushtikon.blogspot.com/2021/09/blog-post_21.html
Creating Togetherness; team Sanjeevani Way (Click link below)
https://www.flickr.com/photos/65629150@N06/albums/72157627904681345
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www.punecorporation.org
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Very minute observations of the problem areas supported by meaningful solutions, sir! The blame game sets rolling, as always, after we encounter a major breach in the natural course of things!
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