Salt Lake-Barrackpore drainage set for upgrade in Kolkata – Times of India

KOLKATA: A neighbourhood right next to Kolkata is getting a cleaner and visually uplifting drainage and sewerage system with covered drains and underground pipelines replacing the open, stinky and polluting drains in large parts of Panihati, Khardah, Titagarh and Barrackpore by the end of next year.
For long, residents living in municipalities north of Kolkata have been demanding covered drains. On both sides of BT Road, Barrackpore-Barasat Road, MB Road and Kalyani Expressway, where several residential complexes have come up in the last two decades, the open drains were an eyesore. Keeping in mind the growing demands of the changing neighbourhood, the municipalities, in coordination with Kolkata Metropolitan Development Authority, are planning to augment the sewerage and drainage network. This is also likely to reduce vector-borne diseases, bring relief from waterlogging and cut down on visual pollution.
While work is underway at Nonachandanpukur, Rabindra Pally, Wireless More, CMDA Nagar and Anandapuri neighbourhoods in Barrackpore, a larger and wider portion of North 24 Parganas neighbouring Kolkata and Salt Lake are under the ambit of future development plans.

“Blocked drainage lines across Barrackpore have been cleaned and new underground sewerage pipelines are being installed. The open drains are being covered,” said Uttam Das, chairman of Barrackpore municipality.
“We have bought a premium property at Titagarh but haven’t been able to shift there as the road leading to our house stinks due to filth from uncovered overflowing drains. It was unimaginable that a neighbourhood next to the city had such shoddy civic amenities. Thankfully, the authorities are now doing something about it,” said Niladri Basu, a techie who lives in Behala.
Debasish Dutta, an LIC agent from Sodepur’s Ramchandrapur, said, “The roads near our home are inundated after barely 15 minutes of rain. Last monsoon, our ground floor was under water for over a week. The rain water mixed with the filth from open drains and made several residents in our area sick.”
Patients coming to several hospitals in the area, like Panihati State General Hospital, Kamarhati Sagar Dutta hospital and Barrackpore BN Bose Hospital, are forced to wade through knee-deep or waist-deep water in the monsoon, another resident said.
KMDA officials said GIS mapping of the area is being carried out to find out the condition of drainage lines. “New storm water drainage lines are being planned to reduce flooding. There will be a detailed drainage network profiling and improvement plans of the outfall channels falling in the canals,” said an official.
Officials said they also plan to develop a hydro-dynamically modelled drainage network for Barrackpore that will have proper outfall channels linked with the canals and Bidyadhari river. “The irrigation department is conducting excavation, desilting and dredging in intercepting canals. We will also assess if a new sewerage treatment plant is needed there,” said the official.