The roadside storm water drains are constructed adjacent to the pedestrian footpaths but are two feet below in the western and eastern suburbs
Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation. File pic
Considering the heavy flooding caused during the monsoon every year, the civic body has come up with a new policy to increase the size of roadside box drains. The implementation of this policy will help reduce flooding as water can travel faster through the drainage system and also because silt inside the drains will be easily removed, which currently doesn't happen.
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The roadside storm water drains are constructed adjacent to the pedestrian footpaths but are two feet below in the western and eastern suburbs. The drains are generally proportionate to the road width, eg: for a road width of 60 feet, the width of the drains is 0.6metres, and for a road width of 90 feet, the width of the drains is 0.9metre. However according to the new policy, for roads of 90 feet and below the width of drains will be 0.9 metre standard and roads above 90 feet will be 1.2 metres.
To address the issues of advanced drainage, long term provision, cleaning issues and maintenance of the roadside drains, a standard size of the drains can be helpful, claimed officials.
The BMC has been struggling to clean roadside drains owing to their small size as no machine can be put into it to clean it and labourers can only go up to a certain depth. BMC claims with the new drains, labourers could go through and through from one manhole cover to another if needed without any problems.
A civic official from the SWD department not willing to be named said, "It used to be difficult to clean the entire box drain and some silt used to still remain in which during monsoon used to be a problem but now with an increased size this problem should be solved. Also the carriage of water will be faster because of larger drains."
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