Kolkata: What makes VIP Road, which links the city to the airport, most vulnerable to waterlogging this monsoon? In fact, after last weekend, motorists have started dreading to drive through the Haldiram-Kaikhali stretch.
Tuesday was another nightmarish day for those headed for the airport. Kids were seen splashing in and out of the waist-deep water on the Kolkata-bound flank near Kaikhali.While different agencies passed the buck to one another, TOI did a reality check and found that the sewer lines in this particular section of the lifeline are clogged because of superfluous and infrequent dredging.
On Wednesday, chunks of silt were seen surfacing from the hume pipes as Rail Vikas Nigam Ltd (RVNL), which is executing the last leg of the Orange Line of metro on VIP Road, tried to complete shifting of the utilities. Officials of PWD, custodian of the VIP Road, said the silt-filled Bagjola canal has made things worse. “Rainwater that accumulates on VIP Road drains into the canal,” a PWD official said.
When asked to explain, an irrigation department, said, “When it rains like this, no amount of dredging will help.” A railways official said on behalf of railways PSU RVNL, “The water is flowing back while passing through the newly-built sewage drains by RVNL.”
The agency had to build a new sewerage line parallel to the 140m length of the under-construction VIP Road metro station because the old drain had fallen on its alignment.
“In the past three years that RVNL has been working in this area, they said they haven’t seen any significant dredging activity for either the sewer lines or the Bagjola canal,” a Railways official said. RVNL is now on the job of linking the new sewer and drainage lines with the main one. “We have to negotiate with silt accumulated for months or maybe … years,” an RVNL worker said. “It’s clear that only superfluous dredging was done. Just as one delves deep for linking the new 3.8m diameter pipe with the old one, he is encountering a huge amount of silt,” he added.
Another worker said, “There was severe waterlogging akin to the current one in 2021. Since there were hardly any vehicles on the road, no one noticed. In the last three years, the city hasn’t seen so much rainfall,” a state official said. Around 100mm of rain was recorded on Friday and 81.1mm on Saturday. In Met parlance,over 60mm in 24 hours is considered heavy downpour.