Figure 9 Illustration depicting numerous calamities and the year they occurred

I n c r e a s i n g N u m b e r s O f W a t e r D i s a s t e r s

 Chennai is becoming increasingly vulnerable to water-related disasters due to poor urban management, loss of water systems due to expansion and pollution, and increased climatic extremes. This has resulted in a large number of deaths as well as serious water quality, availability, and demand challenges.  Rising sea levels and increasing floods are a result of climate change in certain cities throughout the world, while drought and water shortages are a result of climate change in others.For Chennai's 11 million residents, it's both.  Chennai, India's 6th-largest city, gets 1,400mm (55 inches) of rainfall annually, which is more than twice as much as London and nearly four times as much as Los Angeles.Despite this, it made headlines in 2019 as one of the world's first major cities to run out of water.

 Illustration depicting numerous calamities and the year they occurred.

Figure 9 • Illustration depicting numerous calamities and the year they occurred.

 The historic port in southern India has become a case study in what may go wrong whenever urbanisation, industrialisation, and harsh weather mix, and a growing city covers over its watershed to accommodate demand for new dwellings, factories, and offices.

 While climate change and extreme weather have had a role, poor planning is the root cause of Chennai's water problems. As the city expanded, enormous swaths of the floodplain, as well as its lakes and ponds, vanished. According to Anna University academics, “the size of Chennai's aquatic bodies decreased from 12.6 square kilometres to roughly 3.2 square kilometres between 1893 and 2017”(Bremner, 2020).

The majority of the land has been lost in recent decades, including the development of the city's famed IT corridor over 230 square kilometres of marshes in 2008.  In 2019, it was a water deficit that grabbed headlines. As all of the city's main reservoirs went dry, requiring the government to truck in drinking water, the city experienced what it dubbed "Day Zero." People queued for hours to fill containers, water trucks were hijacked, and violence occurred in some areas. According to Anna

University research, and over 60% of city's groundwater will be seriously polluted by 2030. (Chennai Water Shortage: How Chennai, One of the World’s Wettest Major

Cities, Ran out of Water - The Economic Times, n.d.).  “Floods and water scarcity have the same roots: Urbanisation and construction in an area, mindless of the place’s natural limits,” remarked Nityanand Jayaraman, a

Chennai-based writer and environmental activist. “The two most powerful agents of change—politics and business—have visions that are too short-sighted. Unless that changes, we are doomed.”  Three rivers and many nullahs ran the length and breadth of the city.However, siltation as well as unplanned building and encroachment had an influence on their flood-carrying capacity. Due to bad planning and a lack of coordination between numerous government departments, projects to maintain and extend the storage capacities of the tanks and reservoirs have been delayed.  Chennai is an illustrative case of an issue that is rapidly causing havoc in cities throughout the world that are also dealing with fast population growth. Water shortage is a major issue in cities such as Sao Paulo, Beijing, Cairo, and Jakarta. "It's a worldwide problem, not simply a Chennai one," Krishnamurthy explained. "We must collaborate to guarantee that we have a water-secure future."(Bhrigu Kalia,

Graduate, 2019)BRI.

M o n i t o r i n g A n d R e v i e w C o m m i t t e e :

 In 2008, the government constituted six committees to deal with changes in the Chennai Metropolitan Area.They were the housing, infrastructure, investment planning, land use and environment, and traffic and transportation committees, and also the economic and employment committees.  The committees were believed to advise the Chennai Metropolitan

Development Authority (CMDA) and other government agencies on how to

achieve the objectives of the Second Master Plan, prioritising policies, programmes, and action plans, and advise the departments or agencies involved as to how to implement projects.  They have also been tasked with advising detailed studies for effective programme and action plan implementation, framing detailed policies like affordable housing policy and pedestrian safety, reviewing implementation progress and recommending corrections, and identifying quantifiable indicators to evaluate and monitor performance. The committees were supposed to meet every three months, but they haven't in over a year.According to authorities with the Chennai Metropolitan Development

Authority, the bulk of the members are expected to be dismissed, but the

Authority has yet to take action.  The committees have not made any recommendations to the Chennai

Metropolitan Authority in the last two years. The review groups are critical in keeping the Second Master Plan on track, authorities added, because it covers a 20-year period. "The committees' goal is to see if a project satisfies the

Second Master Plan's standards and make any necessary revisions," a CMDA representative explained. The studies looked at employment and income in the formal and informal sectors, land requirements for informal and microenterprises, the rate of urban expansion and investments in infrastructure, primary health care and disease incidence, school enrolment and vocational additional training, and land availability for affordable housing.  Now that five years have passed, it is time to revise the Second Master Plan in accordance with the provisions of the Town and Country Planning Act. (5

Years on, Second Master Plan Adrift Pending Review - The Hindu, n.d.)According to CMDA officials, a review will most likely begin at the next

Authority meeting as the last meeting happened was on December 2013.(Review and Monitoring Committees for Second Master Plan for CMA, n.d.)

CH APT E R - 5 CO NC LU SI O N/S U G GE ST IO N

T r a n s p o r t a t i o n

 The SMP study demonstrates that it focuses on supply-side tactics and adding new investments & infrastructure to the city fabric, rather than upgrading existing systems.  Mobility management (cutting travel demand, lowering the usage of private autos, and improving traffic flow), capacity management (raising the supply of public transportation and NMT users), and environmental management are all tools that may be utilised to aid (reduce dependence on fossil fuels).  Building-level public transit development and parking system management.  The TMP should include a safety chapter that discusses road safety as well as the current pandemic situation and how the master plan should respond.  Road dangers can be reduced by evaluating methods such as graded licencing and

ITS-based traffic enforcement.

 Restrictions and lockdowns have had a significant impact on local commuting networks and public transportation utilisation. This is a chance for the TMP to promote NMT systems throughout the city. Institutional Management must establish indicators and trustworthy techniques to document the impact of pedestrianisation, street vendor inclusion, and NMT promotion.

W a t e r C r i s i s :

 We learned from the analysis that chennai’s water crisis and flood problem is not a natural disaster but human intervention and master plan’s failure to keep up the ecological factors into considerations while planning and to recognise the small scale and lost waterbodies into the plan and bad governance and maintenance played a vital role also which needs to be taken into consideration and a detailed stud of ecological factors and water bodies is required prior to the formation of third master plan for the city which is under process for the betterment of city’s ecological footprint and a sustainable future of for the settlement.

Urban Expansion and Water demand :

 As Chennai’s urban population grows, it is critical to assess water resource availability and predict city carrying capacity for the future.This should be included in future master plans, which are typically prepared with a time horizon of 10-15 years in mind.

 In addition, enough water resource augmentation should be done for every square kilometre of urban growth.It is past time that proper lessons be drawn from the crisis and that the local administration try to avoid future crises. This is especially critical considering Chennai's climate sensitivity and urbanisation tendencies.  The Tamil Nadu government claims to be tackling the issue of water shortage. It established legislation mandating all structures to collect rainwater in 2003.According to the Agriculture Ministry's Central Ground Water Board, the rule helped raise the water table, but the advantages were quickly destroyed by a lack of maintenance.

Groundwater recharging efforts also have struggled to counteract the volume of water removed through boreholes.Which must be rectified as quickly as possible with the support of good governance practises.  Water management measures, such as minimising the proportion of non-revenue water and supporting integrated urban water management techniques, which are used in many worldwide cities.  Udaipur in Rajasthan, which receives little rain, has done a remarkable job of water conservation and management. Few of the other cities are enlisting the help of residents and the private sector to conserve and manage water. Meanwhile, government programmes like as the Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban

Transformation have already evaluated some of these water-supply-augmentation and management options.  Another challenge is budgeting for water resource availability and promoting sustainable urban and industrial growth. With limiting resources, infinite expansion is impossible.

S t r e n g t h e n i n g O f I n s t i t u t i o n s

 Finally, Institutional Management must produce indicators and dependable procedures for recording the impact of pedestrianisation, street vendor inclusion, and

NMT promotion in order to comprehend how social value, environmental quality, and gender roles has changed.  According to industry standards, the SMP should be reviewed and evaluated every five years.  As required, a committee was constituted, but there are no papers indicating how far this examination has progressed.  The TMP can concentrate on issuing monitoring and assessment reports on a regular basis.

M o n i t o r i n g A n d R e v i e w C o m m i t t e s :

 Following five committes has been constituted for the implementation and review of master plan  Traffic & Transport  Investment & Infrastructure  Land Use & Environmental

 Shelter  Economy & Employment

"The committees' goal is to see if a project satisfies the Second Master Plan's standards and make any necessary revisions," a CMDA representative explained. The time has come for a review of the Second Master Plan under the requirements of the Town and Country Planning Act, now that five years have passed.But the last meeting happened was on December 2013.

These meeting needs to be done as soon as possible and a review of the second master plan should be done at an earliest possible time as preparations for third master plan has already been started.

N e e d f o r a N e w L a w t o P r o t e c t W a t e r b o d i e s

 It can be concluded that there might be inadequacy in the current legislation to safeguard our waterbodies, based on Arappor's Social Audit of Waterbodies,

Sewage Study, and efforts against encroachments of waterbodies. If a new Act is required for the preservation and efficient maintenance of waterbodies, this can be debated with the hep of detailed studies and dicussions.

 The water-holding capacity of these natural reservoirs had been drastically diminished due to human encroachment, exacerbating the artificial flood crisis that Guwahati has been experiencing every year.  The new Waterbodies Protection Act (Preservation and Conservation) will not only help to save waterbodies from extinction, but will also aid to alleviate the severe waterlogging and artificial floods that Chennai experiences every monsoon.  These might be developed into eco-tourism destinations, similar to those in

Udaipur, and help generate revenue for the metropolitan region.

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