Chennai is not likely to be monsoon ready even by next year. The Rs 1,447 crore micro and macro drainage project jointly implemented by TNPWD and City Corporation with funding by the Centre has only reached the halfway stage.
Hamstrung mostly by encroachments and a plethora of land acquisition problems, PWD, caretaker of the state water bodies, could only achieve tardy progress, while the corporation has not managed even that.
Union government too has approved the revision of the project completion deadline from September 30, 2012, to March 2014, considering the bottlenecks in execution, senior government sources revealed.
While PWD constructs macro drains to divert floods from the city waterways to the Bay of Bengal, corporation strengthens the stormwater drain network to efficiently drain surplus rainwater into the waterways.
Papers accessed by Deccan Chronicle reveal that some components of the four-year-old mega drainage project have not been started yet.
For instance, construction of a drain from B canal to the sea via Okkiam Maduvu, package 10 of the macro project, was dropped as acquisition of 5.36 hectares of land was to cost Rs 100 crore, while the actual estimate of the component was only Rs 53.77 crore.
Likewise, improvement to Porur tanks and construction of surplus drains that alleviate flooding problems in Porur, Mugalivakkam, Gerugambakkam, Kolapakkam and Manapakkam has not been started yet.
Worse, macro drain works in central Buckingham canal from Triplicane and Mylapore, one of the densely populated areas of the metropolis, have also not been started as at least 5,100 families remain to be evicted there.
The case is no different in Arumbakkam, where around 1,000 encroachments have impeded works in package-II, in which, drains were constructed for only 2.462 of the total 13.16km.
However, PWD has finished nearly 90 per cent work on Okkiyam-Muthukaadu stretch, where the Buckingham canal has been widened up to 100 meters with a service road running on either side of it for the public to enjoy a renovated waterway.
Experts say though the improvements done to the waterways could accommodate more flood water, the clogged storm water drains lying unattended would lead to the city floating in the monsoon.