Gurugram’s annual floods phenomena, explained!

From 8.30 am on Friday, 23 September 2022 till 8.30 am on Saturday, 84.5 mm of rain was recorded in Gurugram. The whole city turned into a lake, suddenly life in the millennium city came to halt.

Similar situation was seen in Bangalore a few days ago, when water flooded the houses of CEOs of big companies, there was an uproar, as if a catastrophe had come.

Reasons were being sought as to why these developed cities with big buildings are drowning in water. The reason came out that storm water drains and natural water bodies have been buried under the concrete for development in the city.

Also Read: Rapid Urbanisation deteriorates quality of life, even in metro cities

Gurugram floods reason one- Topography

In fact, the city of Gurugram in Haryana, which is part of the Delhi NCR region, is surrounded by the Aravalli hills from three sides, the whole city is situated on a slope. The height of Gwalpahari area near Delhi border is 290 meters above sea level, while the lowest area near Najafgarh drain is 200 meters above sea level i.e. 90 meters difference. Water flows from the higher region and collects in the lower areas, that cause floods.

The British knew this, they had built about 100 check dams and ponds in the city to stop the flow of this water. Ghata, Jharsa, Wazirabad and Chakkarpur are some of these major ponds. Whenever there was heavy rain, water would first fill these ponds, so that the low-lying areas did not get flooded immediately.

But these ponds were ruined due to urbanization. For example, Ghata check dam was once spread over an area of ​​370 acres, so much encroachment happened on it that now it has come down to only 2 acres.

Now that these ponds and check dams were destroyed, the mechanism of stopping the water coming from the Aravalis also ended. Because of this, the whole city becomes a pond in short duration rain.

Gurugram floods reason two- overburdened drainage system

Normally, 60 per cent of the rain water in cities goes underground, but in Gurugram, there is so much concretization that only 20 per cent of the water goes into the ground, thereby overloading the drainage system here. Most of the roads here are built along the natural water channel. Because of this the roads get flooded.

The path of nature cannot be stopped, you have to live with it. But we have crushed it in the blind race of development, water is not invading our place, we have built malls and offices in its place.

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