Dinesh Kamath's news 'City faces problems galore during monsoon this time' that was published in Newsband

City faces problems galore during monsoon this time

By Dinesh Kamath

NAVI MUMBAI: Heavy rainfall in Navi Mumbai has led to formation of potholes and narrow roads getting water logged. There was also slowing down of traffic movements on important roads and that too during peak hours. The motorists driving along subways particularly had to face toughest time. Traffic jams, potholes and water logging made the lives of vehicle drivers miserable. In addition to these there were road development works taking place and trees having fallen on the middle of the road at some places leading to additional woes for the motorists. The motorists strongly felt that many roads in Navi Mumbai need to be concretized.

The best news was that Dehrang Dam got filled up totally, in fact it was overflowing. Before the rain started, the authorities had never expected overflowing to take place and hence had made no attempt to store the overflowing water. Many residents felt bad about the fact that overflowing water was wasted instead of being harvested. Even the Barvi and Morbe dams received a good height of water.

“If the water in the dam is de-silted, its height raised and submergence area increased, there will be no wastage of water,” said an official of civic body.    

Ransai dam in Uran also crossed in its overflow mark and this has given tremendous relief to the residents over there since they are now expecting 24 x 7 water supply. Hetawane dam too now has good quantity of water stored.

Thus heavy rains during the past few days have done a lot of good for city residents from water supply angle. The city this year has received much better rainfall than last year and that is a great sign.

But people at Kharghar, Taloja, Ulwe and Dronagiri are receiving less water in spite of torrential rains. This is attributed to power failure in water treatment plant. The residents of these places are bitter about the fact that water cut persists in spite of city receiving good rainfall. When a complaint was lodged with the authorities they promised to rectify the error at the earliest.

When the authorities were told about the road conditions owing to rains they had nothing to say. The residents displayed their anger at having been wrongly informed before the monsoon that the road repair works were done and that there would be no problem during this monsoon. But this is the situation every year when the monsoon starts. Now the authorities are waiting for a dry spell during which time they can repair as many roads as possible by asphalting them.

Another thing about the monsoon this time is that the civic body after witnessing the overflowing of dams have once again reminded all the residential societies in Navi Mumbai to have rain water harvesting systems in their societies if they still do not have them. The civic body has also warned that only the buildings which have the rainwater harvesting provision will get CC and OC. It is great to notice that both the authorities and residents of the city are realizing the importance of conserving rainwater. It is hoped that during the monsoon next year there will be no incidents of rainwater getting wasted.