A spell of moderate rain for over two hours on Sunday morning caused severe waterlogging in many parts of Gurgaon. Several vehicles broke down, pedestrians had to wade through knee-high water, and traffic was hit as water inundated key roads and internal sector areas.
“Some pockets of Gurgaon received heavy rainfall today and waterlogging issues were reported in several areas. In most of these, water levels receded within one-two hours. On Golf Course Road, one of the societies was pumping out a large volume of their internal stormwater which added to waterlogging on this stretch. Waterlogging was reported by Sector 28 residents & the GMDA team installed pump sets to address the issue. Similarly, pump sets were also deployed in Basai. Meanwhile, construction of additional road gullies is underway near Sun City society. No underpasses were flooded in today’s rain,” said Vikram Singh, executive engineer, Gurgaon Metropolitan Development Authority.
The problem
According to experts, inadequate drainage infrastructure, urbanisation and disappearing water bodies and lakes due to concretisation, change in land-use patterns, disruption of natural drains, encroachment at stretches along stormwater drains and choked drainage lines were major reasons for flooding across the city every year.
Sewa Ram, an urban transport systems design expert and faculty member at the School of Planning and Architecture (SPA) in Delhi, said, “Over the years, concretisation has taken place either on top or in the route of natural drains, which blocks natural course of water. Many newer sectors and parts of Old Gurgaon along the Dwarka expressway do not have drainage infrastructure. In several areas, drainage lines are choked due to construction debris or encroachment, so they do not have sufficient capacity to carry heavy surface runoff during monsoons. If the drainage network is discontinuous, roads will be submerged with rainwater. The drainage infrastructure has not been designed to withstand a high intensity of rainfall.”
