With 45 cave-ins reported across the city this monsoon season, the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation (AMC) is conducting a conditional assessment of nearly 200 kilometres of drainage pipelines.
A third-party report on the condition of drainage main trunk pipelines laid at a 45-foot depth 40 years ago will be based on assessments performed by CCTV cameras via robots.
Nearly 600 km of the city’s total 3,300 km of drainage pipeline are main trunk lines. Further, out of this 600 km, nearly 300 km has been laid down in the last ten years.
“These include areas of the North West Zone and the East Zone along the Sardar Patel Ring Road, which is not older than three years. This leaves about 200 km of the oldest main trunk lines, which are prone to damage and thus cave-ins,” said AMC city engineer Harpalsinh Zala.
Following heavy rain on July 10, Ahmedabad city has reported nearly 45 cave-ins across seven zones, the majority of which have occurred in the last ten days, with approximately six of the major ones occurring on main trunk lines of wastewater pipelines. As of Thursday, 30 cave-ins were still being repaired, while 15 were completed.
The drainage pipelines have been the site of all reported cave-ins. The West Zone has reported the most of these, with six cave-ins, followed by the South, Central, and North West zones with five each, the East zone with three, the South West zone with two, the North zone with two, and the East zone with two.
According to sources, the conditional assessment, whose tendering process is nearing completion, will cover sewage lines beneath important roads such as Ashram Road, 132 feet Ring Road, LD College of Engineering to Nehru Nagar to Dharnidhar Derasar, and Kargil Petrol station to Sarkhej on the Sarkhej-Gandhinagar Highway, which is said to have been built in 1995.
Other areas will be Memco to Bapunagar, Behrampura to Pirana, Naroda Patiya to Sarangpur, and Naroda Patiya to BRT route till Virat Nagar.
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