The devastating floods in Chennai have revived Hyderabad’s memories of a similar trauma in August 2000 when 23 cm of rain in 24 hours had drowned the city completely.
As the Tamil Nadu Government administration was left clueless in dealing with the unprecedented calamity, Hyderabad too was afraid that no lesson was learnt from the tragedy 15 years ago and the city was woefully ill-prepared to face such a situation.
Alarmed over the reports of continuing encroachments of water bodies and natural drains in Hyderabad, minister for irrigation T Harish Rao today called a high level official meeting to review the situation. He directed the officials to immediately remove all the encroachments along the Nala or drains and the lakes.
As the encroachments and construction on the water bodies and along the course of water was blamed for the catastrophe in Chennai, in case of Hyderabad floods of August 2000 experts had blamed the illegal encroachments of water bodies.
“Take stringent action against those responsible for such encroachments and the illegal construction”, said Harish Rao. Officials said that survey of 155 lakes was completed and remaining water bodies will be surveyed in next one month. The minister ordered the officials to start the work on 64 tanks.
The massive expansion and development of Hyderabad city over the last one and a half decades has swallowed many more water bodies as new roads, townships and other projects have come up on them. The concrete jungle has also put key water reservoirs like Osman Sagar and Himayat Sagar in peril as their catchment areas have shrunk.
Yet another example of the official negligence and apathy towards the environmental degradation is the ever narrowing path of river Musi which passes through the heart of the city. After construction of one of the biggest bus stations on river bed and turning a part of it in to a garbage dump and a park sided by side, the government was now contemplating to lay Metro line along the river. Experts warn that a repeat of 2000 rains will cause even bigger devastation and flood many parts of the city.
Even in case of normal rainfall the city roads turn in to lakes with upto two feet of water. During the current year the city did not get sufficient rainfall but whenever it rained the city came to a grinding halt as storm water drains were clogged and not able to take in even a two cms of rains in a day.