Highway authority’s own elevation drawing and dry-day photographs point to one choked culvert, a blocked Sonapur-side drain and an underpass floor dug too low-the water now has nowhere to go
Staff Correspondent
JORABAT: Every monsoon, the Assam-Meghalaya border witnesses a blame game over the drowning of NH-27 at Jorabat. But the project drawings of the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI), read together with what residents of Jorabat witness every day, tell a simpler story: the flooding is 'manufactured' at the junction itself - by the design of its drainage and the condition it has been allowed to fall into.
Jorabat sits at the bottom of a natural bowl. The highway authority's elevation drawings for the ongoing six-laning project show the road falling continuously for its last 1.6 kilometres from the Khanapara side, dropping about 64 metres, before hitting the lowest point directly under the flyover. Water arrives at this spot with a tremendous speed. And when it gets there, it has exactly one way out: a single box culvert, roughly six metres wide and three metres high, under the road going towards Byrnihat and the Umtru River.
This one opening has become the chokehold for the stormwater of an entire hillside and the highway itself, and that single opening is dying. A photograph, taken by a local resident on a completely dry day, shows the water inside the culvert having less than 1 foot of clear space to flow through. The culvert's capacity becomes completely choked before the first big rains arrive.
Photograph shows less than one foot of space for water to move under the culvert in normal days.
The problem increases with the drain towards Sonapur, which is supposed to carry the water away from the culvert, is completely blocked due to the throng of roadside dhabas that have come up and blocked the entire drain, with the photographs showing a drain that has practically ceased to exist.
The Sonapur-side drain, which is meant to carry Jorabat's flood water away, is completely blocked and practically non-existent.
Water rushing down from Khanapara at high velocity comes to a complete halt at the culvert mouth, where it deposits its load of garbage, subsequently flooding the highway. Every flood leaves the opening more choked than the one before since the deposited garbage is not cleaned by NHAI regularly. This is why we observe that even after brief periods of rain, Jorabat experiences flooding, as each rain event has diminished the carrying capacity of the culvert.
Elders of the area are emphatic that Jorabat never flooded like this before the flyover was built. Local people allege that when the flyover was constructed, the floor of the underpass below it was dug down, because lowering the road was cheaper than building the flyover longer and higher to give trucks their clearance. The elevation drawings are consistent with what they describe: the lowest point of the entire highway sits under the flyover, well below the ground on either side. The flood watermark on the flyover pillars stands about five feet above the road surface, which the locals allege was the earlier height of the Jorabat road before the flyover was constructed and the underpass made 5 feet below this level.
The questions that follow are uncomfortable for NHAI: Why is the only culvert at Jorabat not cleaned before and during every monsoon, when everything depends on it? Why are the drains on both sides of it left uncleaned year after year, until the authority is forced into emergency clearance after every flood? Why was a fixed concrete culvert constructed at a location known for frequent blockages, instead of using removable steel culvert sections that could be lifted out, cleaned by a machine, and then replaced? Why is there still only one barrel, with no second outlet? Why is the NHAI not reclaiming the Sonapur side drain from the dhabas and other encroachments?
Until those questions are answered, the annual ritual of Jorabat Flooding will continue, and the public will keep on suffering.
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