Widened stormwater drains on the Hogenakkal-Tirupattur High Road will be built by the State Highways Department in the coming weeks to prevent inundation in the town during monsoon.
A field inspection by a team of officials of Department of State Highways, which maintains the stretch, to assess the availability of required land for the new stormwater drains was done a few days ago. “For many years, the stretch in Tirupattur town gets inundated due to excess rainwater that get discharged from the lake on the upstream,” K. Murali, Divisional Engineer (DE), State Highways, told The Hindu.
The existing stormwater drain on both sides of the stretch is narrow with around one feet wide. Over the years, most of the drain, which was built by Tirupattur municipality decades ago, got damaged. More than 500 houses, most of them unregulated structures around the lake near Pudhupettai village on the upstream also obstruct free flow of excess rainwater from the lake into the small drains, said officials.
