One official for every nullah

PUNE: The Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) has chalked out a plan for the forthcoming monsoon whereby one official will be responsible for the maintenance of one nullah or subbasin in the city.
Additional city engineer Vivek Kharwadkar told reporters here on Wednesday that every nullah and subbasin will have one officer looking after it and he will be responsible if some problem arises during the monsoon months.There are about 23 sub-basins and 350-km-long stretch of nullahs in the city.
He said that nearly 200-km-long stretch of nullahs divided over different areas were not shown in the Development Plan maps or revenue records of Pune, due to which some of them have been "legally" constructed upon. "Although there is 350-km-long stretch of nullahs on paper, there was only 150 km shown in the DP since a long time. As a result, constructions have come up on nearly 14-kmlong stretch of nullahs spread over different parts of the city."
Kharwadkar said, "The PMC has now chalked out a plan where we are preparing a comprehensive survey of natural nullahs to ensure that the flow is restored."
"Every ward office has a copy of the survey and we will ensure that building permissions are given only after checking the map to assess the status of water bodies," he said, adding: "A special PMC team conducted the survey with the help of satellite images by dividing the city into 24 parts and surveying them separately. The survey gives the ground reality of the status of smaller water bodies in the city."
Kharwadkar said that another reason for flooding of nullahs is the reduced capacity of rainwater percolation in the ground.
"The rainfall intensity has increased drastically as we have observed in the last few years. Ideally, 50 per cent of rainwater should run-off and 50 per cent should percolate. However, the run off percentage has increased to 90 per cent in the last decade or so due to urbanization. This is also a reason why the nullahs overflow during monsoon," Kharwadkar added.