After Gurgaon’s roads turned into rivers, city looks underground for a fix

Gurgaon is looking underground to tackle its perennial waterlogging problem, with two technological fixes being pitched — high-capacity rainwater injection wells and underground storage reservoirs.

The proposals were a key highlight of Haryana Chief Minister Nayab Singh Saini’s briefing to Prime Minister Narendra Modi during their meeting in Delhi on Thursday, following groundwork initiated earlier this week by the Municipal Corporation of Gurugram (MCG) and technical experts to overhaul the city’s drainage network.

Experts, however, cautioned that the technology will work only if underlying drainage and ecological problems are addressed.

Under the immediate blueprint finalised with specialists from IIT Gandhinagar, officials said, civic authorities have identified four chronic bottlenecks for the first phase of implementation:

The technical framework relies on setting up specialised injection wells with a rapid absorption capacity ranging between 48 and 80 litres per second (LPS), MCG officials said.

An injection well is a sub-surface structure that pushes filtered rainwater deep into underground rock layers. In highly concretised cities where water cannot soak naturally into the soil, these high-capacity wells are meant to quickly drain flooded roads and bypass dense upper ground.

These will be paired with high-volume underground storage tanks to capture flash surface runoff immediately from the carriageways before forcing it directly into deeper aquifer layers.

During a review meeting with IIT Gandhinagar professors Udit Bhatia and Vivek Kapadia on Tuesday, MCG Commissioner Pradeep Dahiya called for a one-year deadline to complete the installations.

He stated that the cumulative capacity of the tanks and injection wells should be engineered to absorb three times the volume of expected peak rainfall.

Officials said the system will also incorporate a Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) network linked directly to the Central Ground Water Board to monitor hydrological absorption and groundwater recharge in real time.

Former municipal engineers and urban environmental experts, however, cautioned that technological blueprints will yield results only if structural execution and baseline ecological factors are addressed simultaneously.

“The two plans (of the MCG) will work only if they are properly budgeted for and monitored,” said C R Bisnoi, retired Executive Engineer of the MCG.

“But in my view, what Gurgaon needs are also some old-school solutions – making ponds and reservoirs in parks, and removing encroachments from drains.”

Expressing stronger skepticism, city-based sustainability and water recharge expert Sunil Pachar argued that technology-heavy approaches often fail to address foundational structural issues.

“None of the government’s moves have worked so far. In my experience, such wells and tanks are usually poorly designed,” Pachar said.

“Ahmedabad also flooded a month ago despite heavy interventions, close to where IIT Gandhinagar is. The root cause nobody understands is increased concretisation and the fact that the natural 78-metre slope from the Aravallis down to Najafgarh is being blocked,” Pachar added.

“Grassroots-level local opinion should also be taken, not just a helicopter approach. What might work for the Southern Peripheral Road will not work for the Dwarka Expressway, the city is unique,” he added.

Addressing reporters at Haryana Bhawan following his meeting with the PM, Chief Minister Saini defended the administration’s emergency response.