Pul Prahladpur railway underpass removed from list of waterlogging hotspots

The railway underpass at Pul Prahladpur in southeast Delhi, infamous for going under water every monsoon till about a year ago, has been removed from the list of waterlogging hotspots, PWD officials said.

It gained notoriety over the years with incidents of people drowning in the waterlogged underpass coming to light. The most recent incident was in May last year when a man's body was pulled out from the inundated underpass.

The underpass -- a crucial link between south and southeast Delhi -- was among the Public Works department's (PWD) seven critical waterlogging points. It would have to be shut for vehicular movement every monsoon, leading to traffic snarls.

According to a senior PWD official, waterlogging has plagued the site for nearly 20-25 years but the situation was aggravated over the last 10-15 years.

Explaining the reason behind the worsening condition, he pointed to the presence of a Delhi Jal Board sewage pumping station at Khanpur. During monsoons, all the sewage from the drain would overflow onto the roads, leading to waterlogging.

"The old pump house was a few metres away from the main road and by the time the water would reach the pump house through the pipes, the situation would have already spiralled out of control," he said.

Speaking about the interventions made at the site, the official said a huge sump with 7.5-lakh-litre capacity was constructed and a separate pipeline laid to discharge the storm water into a nearby Municipal Corporation of Delhi drain.

"A permanent pump house having six motors with a capacity of 100 horsepower each has been set up to drain out the water and clear the underpass. There is space for future expansion and two more pumps can be installed if the need arises," the official said.

The department has connected two pumps to a two-feet pipe which has a 600-mm diameter to flush out the water into an open drain, he added.

The other issue was that the sewage would also contain polythene and other solid waste materials that would clog the pipes. These positive displacement pumps have automatic screens that filter the waste materials from the water, the official said.

"The sumps also get filled with silt but the pumps have a system where they circulate a certain amount of water through a jetting system so that the silt does not accumulate, ensuring that no manual intervention is required," he said.

The department has also removed manual intervention in the operation of these pumps.

"These are automatic pumps with level sensors. If the water exceeds a metre, one pump will start to function. If the water exceeds that level, the other will start," he said.

During the first monsoon showers last year, there was waterlogging as the pumps had not started functioning.

"But the problem has been resolved since then. There are CCTV cameras installed at the pump house to monitor the situation and these are connected to the mobile phones of the area officials concerned. They can monitor the situation," he said.

The PWD has identified 165 waterlogging spots and five hotspots across Delhi and is fully prepared to tackle the problem in these areas, PWD Minister Atishi said in April.

The five waterlogging hotspots are -- New Rohtak Road, under the Zakira Nagar flyover, the Loni Road roundabout, near the Jahangirpuri Metro Station and the Karala Kanjhawala Road.