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Storm Water Drains and BBMP budget
Written By Ravi_D - 1 September, 2008
Bangalore BBMP BWSSB Budget Drains Analysis
Vehicles, animals and now people floating in rain water pools - Sound familiar?
Deja vu. Examples: Today's Deccan, Friday's Deccan
For once, let us forget what happens with the money spent. But what if the allocation was never spent? Attached PDF is an extract from BBMP's budget document.
Rs 37,063.33 lakhs - 07-08 budget estimate; 8,349.33 lakhs - 07-08 revised estimate (Spent ?)BBMP's allocation for 08-09 is lower than 07/08. If the same trend continues, and Bangalore's current citizen lethargy remains, expect worse come next monsoon.
This is nothing new. First allocation was in 2002-03. See this Hindu article from 24/Apr/07. And this one from 09/May/07.
Rains, drains, flooding and misery is a real story. You like it or not, this will repeat next year, and the year after and the year after - Unless we do something about it. I know spending money does not solve the problem, however, it is a good indicator of our willingness to tackle the problem at least.
Thanks,
Ravi
COMMENTS

what exactly is "revised" estimate?
silkboard - 2 September, 2008 - 03:53
Good digging Ravi!
See these on page "JNNURM works"
- Hebbala Valley - budget estimate 7390 lakhs, revised estimate Rs 2122 lakhs
- Koramangala Valley - Rs 4460 lakhs, revised estimate Rs 587 lakhs
- Remodelling of drains in 3 CMCs, estimated Rs 6000 lakhs, revised Rs 1477 lakh
- And this one is the most dramatic
- Separation of sewerage from SWD, BBMP share to BWSSB - estimated Rs 4000 lakhs, revised Rs 2.9 lakhs only !!
what exactly is revised estimate - actual money spent? Was this because they couldn't spend
- as the planning (original estimate) was poor
- or they simply didn't finish the work they had planned?
Perhaps we should be happy that they didn't drain all the "budgeted" money. Corruption could have made that a possibility, right?


All earth is basically a drainage system.
tsubba - 6 September, 2008 - 02:12
Surprisingly, recent evidence suggests that it rains more in the city and slightly downwind than in the regional rural periphery. This is according to a study by NASA scientist Marshal Shepherd. The urban heat island effect, where cities are warmer than their surroundings and which causes the build-up of rain clouds on the city; pollution, which allows rain to coalesce around dust and oil particles; and the wind-break effect of cities, which causes the clouds to discharge on the cities, all seem to contribute to this phenomena. Bengaluru needs to prepare for more rain than average and higher intensity rains at the same time. Cities also increase runoff as more and more soft agricultural and fallow areas get built upon or paved. From a small well-mulched site, hardly 10 per cent of the rain falling will runoff as storm water. However, build a house on the same site and pretty much 90 per cent of the rain falling will runoff as storm water. Buildings increase runoff tremendously in the Bengaluru context and the storm water drains have to cope with this increase. Waste management Solid waste management is crucial to flood management since most of the uncollected garbage will end up in the lowest area, usually the storm water drains, choking them and reducing their ability to carry storm water out. Tanks and lakes which collected surplus water and recharged the groundwater or dissipated it slowly are on the decline. These are built up, like the ISRO headquarters built on an old tank bed. They then become prone to flooding or transfer the flood problem downstream. The network of tanks and the valleys and drains connecting them are in a bad state of management with encroachments on several of them. With no institutional approach to manage the tanks and the valleys, little is done except during the flood event itself to ensure that the channels flow freely and that the tanks are not encroached upon. Traditional storm water management techniques simply collect the rain water and funnel it across the city downstream. Newer methods combine traditional approaches with new ones such as Sustainable Drainage Systems (SUDS). It employs a range of natural processes to purify urban runoff. Removal of sediment, bio-filtration, biodegradation and water uptake by plants all help to remove pollutants. Vulnerability maps of areas prone to flooding need to be prepared for citizens to become aware of the choice they make for where they live. Rainwater harvesting Even as the Government is working towards making RWH mandatory in the coming days for the city, the system has one of the best potentials to replenish ground water, improve its quality, provide supplementary water for domestic requirements and mitigate flooding. If every building in Bengaluru can store or recharge 60 mm of rain in a single day it should be possible to mitigate the effect of almost every flood except the rare. This means that a 100 square metre roof area will need to store or recharge 6,000 litres of water. Zones with the best possible recharge and zones with the best possible storage need to be identified in the city and steps taken to encourage people to go in for rainwater harvesting. A recharge well of 3 feet diameter and about 20 feet depth can send in up to 12,000 litres of water into the ground in a single day, provided lithological conditions are favourable. The city needs many such recharge wells in the catchment area of critical flood zones to detain flood waters and top up the aquifers instead of surface flow flooding. At the broader scale, tanks and lakes need to be networked and managed as retention and detention structures. With rainfall prediction accuracy being developed, tanks have to be linked to catchments and kept ready to hold the maximum water to dampen peak storm events. A deslited tank in Bengaluru can recharge up to 11 mm of water every day while an undesilted one can recharge hardly 1 mm. Desilted tanks can recharge aquifers quickly, lower the surface water levels and be in a position to function as flood mitigators. Full tanks are not good at dampening floods.Actually ravi, if you meet sudhira on saturday, you should ask him about mapping, storm water drains and prediction systems that Vishwanath talks about here. He has a PhD in the area under Prof. Ramachandra of IISc.


About relativey little less rains in periphery
silkboard - 6 September, 2008 - 03:36
May be true. More than few times, we have noticed that while it was raining and jayanagar, till Jayadeva circle, almost till silkboard junction, it wasn't in whitefield. The reverse observation is much less - outnumbered 1 to 5.
Have you see any such rainfall micro-map of Bangalore Metro Region? I am sure nobody has tried to map to ths level yet, but this should be agood project for our local university's relevant department (geography?)
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