Rain gardens to come up along city roads in Vijayawada

VIJAYAWADA: The Vijayawada Municipal Corporation (VMC) is looking to establish rain gardens along the city roads to tackle the water logging problem in the city while also practicing rainwater harvesting.

The roads in the city are all covered with asphalt from drain to drain leaving no scoop for water to seep into the soil beneath it so the rainwater harvest pits on margins of road would help in rejuvenating ground water table.

V Prasanna Venkatesh, Municipal Commissioner of Vijayawada, said that rain gardens of about one-and-a-half-meter deep rainwater harvesting pits are going to be constructed around the roads with wider medians. The pits will be filled with rock, sand and other materials.

“For the existing and narrow roads, we will spot the low-lying areas on road margins where water gets stagnated even for couple of hours after rainfall. At such spots, 10-metre-deep harvesting pits covered with meshes will be arranged. This helps in harvesting more quantity of storm water and address the water stagnation problem,” Venkatesh added.

The non-cemented soil area near road which is not covered with plantation or the harvest pits would be covered with interlocking tiles which could be removed and affixed later whenever there was a need to lay pipelines or cables in the ground.

The commissioner said that the corporation had made it compulsory for new residential and commercial properties to have harvesting pits and on-site garbage compost units to acquire occupancy certification.