After Gurgaon’s roads turned into rivers, city looks underground for a fix

• Subhash Chowk on Sohna Road. Earlier this week, The Indian Express reported on how school buses and children were left stranded on this road for hours in waist-deep water during recent spells of intense rain.
• Rajiv Chowk
• The Medanta underpass
• Sheetla Mata Road.

How the two fixes will work

The technical framework relies on setting up specialised injection wells with a rapid absorption capacity ranging between 48 and 80 litres per second (LPS), MCG officials said.

An injection well is a sub-surface structure that pushes filtered rainwater deep into underground rock layers. In highly concretised cities where water cannot soak naturally into the soil, these high-capacity wells are meant to quickly drain flooded roads and bypass dense upper ground.

These will be paired with high-volume underground storage tanks to capture flash surface runoff immediately from the carriageways before forcing it directly into deeper aquifer layers.

During a review meeting with IIT Gandhinagar professors Udit Bhatia and Vivek Kapadia on Tuesday, MCG Commissioner Pradeep Dahiya called for a one-year deadline to complete the installations.

He stated that the cumulative capacity of the tanks and injection wells should be engineered to absorb three times the volume of expected peak rainfall.

Officials said the system will also incorporate a Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) network linked directly to the Central Ground Water Board to monitor hydrological absorption and groundwater recharge in real time.

Following the strategy meeting, a joint technical team comprising the IIT professors, MCG Additional Commissioner Yash Jaluka, and Gurugram Metropolitan Development Authority (GMDA) Executive Engineer Amit Godara Wednesday carried out ground inspections in Sectors 46 and 47 to begin finalising tank locations and assess sub-surface conditions.

Expert speak

Former municipal engineers and urban environmental experts, however, cautioned that technological blueprints will yield results only if structural execution and baseline ecological factors are addressed simultaneously.

“The two plans (of the MCG) will work only if they are properly budgeted for and monitored,” said C R Bisnoi, retired Executive Engineer of the MCG.

“But in my view, what Gurgaon needs are also some old-school solutions – making ponds and reservoirs in parks, and removing encroachments from drains.”

Expressing stronger skepticism, city-based sustainability and water recharge expert Sunil Pachar argued that technology-heavy approaches often fail to address foundational structural issues.

“None of the government’s moves have worked so far. In my experience, such wells and tanks are usually poorly designed,” Pachar said.

“Ahmedabad also flooded a month ago despite heavy interventions, close to where IIT Gandhinagar is. The root cause nobody understands is increased concretisation and the fact that the natural 78-metre slope from the Aravallis down to Najafgarh is being blocked,” Pachar added.

“Grassroots-level local opinion should also be taken, not just a helicopter approach. What might work for the Southern Peripheral Road will not work for the Dwarka Expressway, the city is unique,” he added.

‘Gurgaon saw second-highest rainfall in Haryana this season’

Addressing reporters at Haryana Bhawan following his meeting with the PM, Chief Minister Saini defended the administration’s emergency response.

He noted that Gurgaon received the second-highest rainfall in Haryana this season after Yamunanagar, including a concentrated 230 mm deluge between August 6 and 8.

He stated that the government has systematically targeted 99 waterlogging points across the city, installing recharge wells that have injected approximately 13,000 metric litres of storm runoff into the ground.

CM Saini also outlined ongoing macro-drainage works, including the operationalisation of Leg-4, desilting of Badshahpur Drain’s Leg-1, Leg-2, and Leg-3 after clearing encroachments, and the construction of a new drainage channel at Hero Honda Chowk along the Delhi-Jaipur highway.

In the Aravalli foothills, check dams have been constructed to stem runoff entering urban sectors, while 74 historical ponds have been revitalised and roadside green belts lowered to function as catchment swales, he said.

For better long-term regional drainage, Saini said Japanese firm Nippon Koei has been engaged to conduct a topographical survey to channel surplus runoff from Gurgaon’s low-lying areas through Nuh into the Yamuna basin.

Alongside this, an ongoing project with IIT Delhi will establish 100 specialised rainwater harvesting structures ahead of the next monsoon to channel 25 to 30 crore litres of water directly into the water table, he said.