This story is from November 12, 2014

Government panel lists flood-control tips

A seven-member committee set up by the state government to mitigate the city’s flood problem met on Tuesday and took several important decisions.
Government panel lists flood-control tips
GUWAHATI: A seven-member committee set up by the state government to mitigate the city’s flood problem met on Tuesday and took several important decisions.
The team, comprising experts of top institutes of the country, advocated a number of changes in the city’s drainage system to control floods.
The committee suggested conducting a phase-wise total station contour survey at an interval of every 0.5 metre in the Guwahati Metropolitan Region (GMR).

At least 50-60 tipping bucket rain gauges, with electronic measurement and automatic transmission to a central database to monitor and collect rainfall data, should be installed across the length and breadth of the city, said the members.
They said distribution rainfall is not spatially and temporally uniform in all places.
The committee further said, in order to prevent the storm-water coming from the Meghalaya hills from entering the city, the public works department (roads) should be asked to construct side-drains along the newly-constructed VIP Road, from Koinadhara Hills to Rani, Patgaon, along the southern side of NH-37.
“The drains along the NH-37, from Koinadhora to Jalukbari, should be wide enough to bear the load of water coming down from the Meghalaya hills,” the committee said.

Former VC of Gauhati University, N K Choudhury, director of Ahmedabad’s Nirma University, Utpal Sarma, chairman of the technical advisory committee of the water resource department, A K Mitra, and former head of the geography department of Cotton College, B C Kalita, attended the meeting, along with the member-secretary of Guwahati Metropolitan Development Authority (GMDA), M Angamuthu.
Professor of IIT-Roorkee, Nayan Sarma, and head of IIT-Guwahati’s civil engineering department, Arup Kumar Sarma, submitted their suggestions in writing as they could not attend the meeting.
“The district administration is continuing its eviction drive at various locations of the city. Besides, we will also implement the suggestions given by the committee,” said M Angamuthu, CEO of GMDA and the deputy commissioner of Kamrup (Metro) district.
The committee will interact with the concerned government departments and agencies on November 29 to take stock of their respective action plans.
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