Unsuspecting Srinivasa Rao, a school teacher residing in Venkateswara Nagar, was having dinner along with his wife and children when incessant rain triggered floods in the colonies close to the Potharaju canal, considered the ‘sorrow of Ongole’, in no time on October 4.
The entire family was busy frantically bailing out the rainwater that threatened to damage electrical appliances and other household articles. There was no let-up in their vigil all night as the sky, which opened up, brought copious rain continuously for more than 12 hours.
So was the plight of more than 2,000 people in 12 municipal wards of the city who live close to the canal the modernisation of which has been going on at a snail’s pace for various reasons.
“We live in constant fear of flooding,” a group of residents complains as the city gets maximum rainfall during the northeast monsoon.
The proposal to modernise the Potharaju canal with a width of 120 ft at a cost of ₹80 crore was mooted in 2015.
The project to widen the canal could not be taken up for a width of even 33 ft at most places for reasons such as rampant encroachment of the ‘poramboke’ lands on the southern and northern side of the canal, sources in the Irrigation Department said.
“The incessant rain brought to the fore the lack of foresight on the part of the administrators to put in place a fool-proof drainage network to carry the storm water,” says Ongole Town Development Committee president M. Subba Rao.
As a result, most of the city roads, including the arterial Kurnool Road, were under a sheet of water.
Every time there is a rain, people in areas such as Sriram Colony, Maruthi Nagar, Srinivasa Colony, Nehru Nagar, Chandraiah Nagar, Balaram Colony, Satyanarayanapuram, Papa Colony, Bilal Nagar, Moturu Udhyam Colony, and Bhagat Singh Nagar spend sleepless night and save their belongings.
“People of at least 200 houses have to be relocated for the project to gather steam,” Mr. Subba Rao explains in a conversation with The Hindu.
“Though a ₹350-crore underground drainage system has been mooted with funding by the World Bank, the project has not seen the light of the day for unknown reasons,” laments Sambasiva Rao, a shopkeeper on the Kurnool Road, while draining out the rainwater in the cellar of the multi-storeyed building using an electric motor.
“Every time there is a 10-cm rain, we have to drain the water using an electric motor,” adds another shopkeeper, Srinivasa Reddy.
Meanwhile, a team of workers from the municipal corporation worked round the clock to clear the clogged drains. They also removed the dividers on several roads, including the north bypass road, to facilitate the flow of stagnant water.
“We are working 24 x 7 to clear the bushes obstructing the flow of water in the Potharaju canal,” says Municipal Commissioner M. Venkateswara Rao.
“The absence of coordination between the irrigation and municipal staff in maintaining the canal is responsible for the plight of the people, as it is neither an irrigation project nor a regular storm water drain,” says CPI(M) Prakasam district assistant secretary G.V. Konda Reddy.
The flooding of even the arterial roads is due to the absence of wider drains to carry the storm water. Underground drainage system funded by the Union and State governments is the need of the hour, as the civic body lacks the capacity to take up a project of such a magnitude with its own funds, says Mr. Reddy.
