After years of waterlogging woes and facing criticism from all corners, the BMC claims to have been working on war footing towards resolving the city's flooding problem. Of the 386 chronic flooding spots identified by the civic body, civic officials said they have already completed work at 171 spots and prepared a detailed plan for the rest.
The civic body has made a budgetary provision of Rs 150 crore for works to mitigate chronic flooding spots in its budget 2021-22.
Heavy rainfall in July-September 2020 caused floods in the city on several occasions and south Mumbai witnessed more waterlogging due to unpreceded rainfall. BMC had said it had fixed the chronic flooding spot at Hindmata by widening the drains, but that too flooded almost during every heavy rainfall and it took hours for the water to recede. Similarly, at Gandhi Market in Sion where BMC had put a long overhead pipeline to take flood water till the drainage network nearby with the help of pumps failed to reduce flooding.
However, BMC said before monsoon 2021, it will be able to resolve more such chronic flooding spots. "Remedial works to tackle 118 flooding spots have been going on and the same are expected to be completed before the onset of monsoon 2021. Out of the remaining 97 flooding spots, the remedial works to tackle 40 chronic flooding spots are estimated to be completed before the monsoon of 2022," said a BMC official.
He added, "Works to tackle 13 more flooding spots are at a planning stage, and remaining 44 flooding spots are on state government or private properties. Redressal of these flooding spots will be planned in coordination with the concerned government authorities / private owners.
The civic body had invited 45 new tenders for assigning work for 58 flooding spots amounting to Rs. 715.51 crore and of which a provision of Rs 150 crore is proposed in 2021-22.
Meanwhile, the civic body has claimed that it has completed around 95% of widening and deepening work and 80% of the construction of retaining wall work of Mithi River till date, which resulted in an increase in holding capacity of Mithi by two times and its carrying capacity has been increased by three times.
The plan for development and pollution control of Mithi River has been prepared and its implementation is proposed in four packages. For this, the civic body has proposed Rs 347 crore, and another Rs 50 crore has been proposed for the River Rejuvenation (Dahisar, Poisar, Oshiwara rivers) project.
Furthermore, the civic body has hiked the budget provision for various capital works under the Storm Water Drain (SWD) department. The total budget provision of Rs. 732.65 crore was made in 2020-21, the budget allocation has been hiked to Rs 1149.74 crore is proposed in 2021-22.
