Rain rain go away, come again when we are better prepared

In Delhi, a city usually parched, rains are always welcome. Don’t we just love to lift our faces to the skies to better enjoy the cool and soothing effect of the city’s first rains? And then in precisely 24 hrs the romance dies as we walks with our heads down, cursing and muttering, zig zagging across the city’s water logged streets, jumping from one brick to another to avoid that suspicious piece of foul smelling crap that’s insistently dodging us.
Well its high time (and I mean literally, not just metaphorically) that we take our drains seriously and try getting inspired by what other countries are doing. And they are doing a lot….
If Tokyo is using infiltration pits and trenches, then France is using filter drains, Zurich is using silt traps, Scotland and Australia are using detention ponds and US and Sweden are using bioswales, buffer strips and porous pavements to solve their drainage problems.
Another good example is the city of Zurich. Under its ‘stream daylighting’ or revitalizing program more than 16'000 m of the city’s streams were brought back to life and some 250 liters of extraneous water diverted to them, reducing the burden on the city’s sewage treatment plant. For more see http://www.gsd.harvard.edu/events/conferences/restoration/pages/program/abstracts/zurichstream.htm.
In India one interesting but relatively unheard of technology being used is the 'eco-phalt' road technology that uses a special ingredient, called Drain Asphalt Modified Additive or DAMA that helps the road remain dry even in rains by sucking in the surface water. To find out more read http://www.skalmadi.org/story/2004/8/2/42430/54884.
For more on other innovative fixes to fix our drainage problems read my article at http://hindustantimes.com/StoryPage/StoryPage.aspx?id=77c427ab-3554-407d-97e2-7d69a35b7d50
Or share with me other techniques and technologies that are being used to clean our drains at cooshalle.samuel@hindustantimes.com