GHMC Chief seeks proper diagnosis for flooding in Hyderabad

Hyderabad: GHMC Commissioner Dr. B. Janardhan Reddy stressed on the need for proper diagnosis for the problem of urban flooding for Hyderabad City and out of the box solution for its mitigation.

Addressing a day-long workshop on “Urban floods: Way out for Hyderabad city” for GHMC Engineers held at JNTU on Saturday, Janardhan Reddy said that despite limited resources, the GHMC needs to have holistic approach by phasing the solutions on mitigation.

JNTU Principal Dr. E. Saibaba Reddy presided over the workshop.

JNTU Professor and Coordinator of Centre of Excellence, JNTU - Hyderabad Dr. K. Lakshma Rao under whose leadership the study has been carried out mentioned that the rainfall patterns are changing due to climatology changes, urbanization and environmental imbalance. Heterogeneity of rainfall creates heavy rains in certain pockets and light or no rain in certain other pockets.

The study titled “Integrated Urban Flood Storm Water Network (urban by pass) for GHMC” completed for 229 water logging locations in GHMC under a MoU between GHMC and Centre of Excellence JNTU by sharing cost of study 50:50. The outcome of study proposed additional 450 km of urban flood storm water drain in the central median, 270350 Rain Water Harvesting Structures by households under social responsibility, 17767 Rain Water Harvesting Structures on Government lands and 636 water tanks to be constructed under BOT basis. The initial indicative cost of storm water drain is about Rs. 400 Cr which excludes cost of recambering the roads, land acquisition and Rain Water Harvesting Structures which may cost around Rs. 2,000 Crore.

The GHMC Commissioner suggested for detailed discussion with all the stake holders like Institution of Engineers, Retired professors, Retired Senior Engineers, NGOs, Town planners before adopting the recommendations and revise the estimates after considering the valuable opinions.