Sir,

During the past few days, a few letters have appeared in this column complaining that whenever there is heavy rain, their houses are flooded with smelly underground disposal water. This is because many commercial buildings and house owners have not separated rain water and toilet water. Therefore, there is overloading of the underground disposal pipes resulting backflow into the bathrooms and smelly houses.

While this is certainly unacceptable, there is more than one party who are responsible for this condition. Therefore, multiple approaches are needed to solve this problem:

1. Most importantly, MCC must prepare road side open drains for residents to connect surplus rain water to these drains. About 4 years back, MCC built L-shaped roadside drains in front of every house in Jayalakshmipuram but sadly they were not interconnected to a main drain which should lead the water to Kukkarahalli Lake! In fact these drains over the years have got blocked mainly due to it not being cleaned regularly and new house builders carelessly covering these drains and all the money spent has gone down the drain! MCC has to rectify this.
2. It is also MCC’s responsibility to see that all new commercial buildings and residential houses have rain water harvesting so that at least 60 to 70 percent of the rain water is used for their own usage. These buildings should not be given completion certificates until this condition is fulfilled. It is imperative that there should be two outlets one for UGD connecting to roadside buried UGD main line and the shallow one for surplus rain water flowing into open storm water drain.
3. Regarding buildings built earlier, owners must be encouraged to install this facility. I agree that it is not cheap but a substantial incentive could be given for such houses by giving Rs. 50 to Rs. 100 rebate in their monthly water bill. A physical check by the MCC official may be necessary. In addition in the annual Corporation tax, some rebate could be considered.

– U.B. Acharya, Jayalakshmipuram, 19.6.2021

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