KARACHI: Illegal plazas, houses main cause of flooding
KARACHI, June 10: Flooding of the whole city during the last rainy season had been caused by blocking of the natural drains through illegal construction of commercial plazas, large houses with their gardens, parking lots and government offices, and there is no way of solving the problem other than their removal, said Salim Alim Uddin, director of the Orangi Pilot Project.
He was speaking at the weekly lecture programme of the Pakistan People’s Party on the topic of `Rains in Karachi: problems and their solutions’.
Explaining the problem with the help of maps of the large drains in the city which have been completely choked and are invisible to the naked eye because of large- scale illegal constructions over them, Salim said that for a very long time it had been propagated that the problem was due to the dwellers of katchi abadis who lived along the major drains. Last year's heavy rains and the crisis resulting from them brought to light the actual situation that the drains had been choked by the construction of bungalows, plazas, car parks and government buildings right across these drains.
Quoting the example of the crisis on the main Clifton Road and Bath Island last year, he pointed out that the drain from the Cantonment station to the Nehar-i-Khayam had been blocked by the construction of bungalows on 1000 square yards illegal plots and their lawns. Some of these had been dug up but many still remained and the problem was still far from solved.
He said last week's cyclone in the Arabian Sea could have caused a major disaster in Karachi, not only due to the choking of the drains but much more so due to the digging up of wide and deep trenches all over the city, if instead of turning towards the Balochistan coast and the Gulf, it had continued moving towards the coastal areas of Sindh.
There were no encroachments on the natural drains and rivulets in Turbat and adjoining areas and yet the unfortunate disaster and the tragic loss of human lives. Just imagine what could have happened if Karachi had been hit, or what will happen if future cyclones do not change course or die down on the deep seas, he said.
He said that 90 per cent of the sewerage of the city passed through the natural drains into the sea instead of the sewerage system laid at huge costs. This sewage bypassed the treatment plants and as a result untreated sewage flowed down to the sea creating major environment problems. A basic problem with the sewerage lines was that they were at lower levels than the natural drains, whose level had been going up in the absence of any dredging and cleaning for years. All the government departments had been saying till last year that the natural drains only carried rainwater and not the sewage.
During heavy rains the water pressure goes up 100 times and the sewerage system unable to cope with the pressure and being at a lower level than the natural drains cannot empty this water into the drains. As a result gutter water and rainwater gets mixed and spills out of the sewers to remain on freshly built roads for weeks together.
At so many places fresh water lines, electricity and gas lines ran right across the drains due to which large-scale contamination of drinking water and the resulting spread of water-borne diseases had become so common.
Salim pointed out that due to the pressure of the encroachers’ mafia natural drains were being closed and sewerage lines were being placed inside them. How could a sewerage line of 36 inch diameter replace a drain of 50 feel width, he asked. It was sad that the 135-foot wide Nehr-i-Khayam had been reduced to a mere 15 feet width and valuable land on its side had been allotted to build bungalows. Unless the Nehr was widened to its original width and properly floored and embanked, the problem would persist, he argued.
He said that as against the encroachment of the elite, the residents of katchi abadis on many sites had voluntarily demolished parts of their houses to give space for the broadening of the drains passing through the abadis. No force had to be used to clear these passages.
A much greater problem existed on the other side of the China Creek, where the Soldier Bazar drain and the City Station drain carrying sewage and storm water of the old city emptied themselves.
He said that the entire creek along the Mai Kolachi Bypass had been reclaimed for cutting new residential plots and building commercial plazas of the elite and the outflow had been reduced to a mere 30-foot wide artificial outlet. There never had been a problem of overflowing of gutters in the Pakistan Chowk and Haqqani Chowk areas, but since these drains had been blocked by the Mai Kolachi landfills, the problem had become persistent.
During the last rains, I.I. Chundrigar Road and the City Station area were transformed into a lake for days just because the outlets of drains were choked. There was no sense in digging up I.I. Chundrigar Road and laying new sewerage lines below the levels of the natural drains if the outlets remained choked.—PPI
