Sponge city In Water Management
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11 December 2021 Current Affairs:Chennai is all set to adopt innovative water management strategies and transform into a sponge city to curb urban flooding.
Highlights:
- The sponge city concept seeks to make urban areas more permeable, have more open spaces to store rainwater, and permit it to percolate to aquifers.
- The Water Resources Department in Chennai is looking over the possibility of digging recharge shafts in smaller water bodies across the town.
- These recharge shafts are often dug up to 80-90 feet. It’ll help replenish the water level.
- As per the plan, smaller water bodies & temple tanks might be used as structures for storing surplus water during heavy rain. Water is often treated, drawn, and supplied to the town.
Sponge city
- Sponge city may be a new urban construction model for flood management and to strengthen ecological infrastructure & drainage systems.
- This idea was proposed by Chinese researchers in 2000.
- The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and State Council accepted this idea as an “urbanism policy” in 2014.
- This technique helps alleviate urban flooding, the urban heat island effect and water resources shortage.
- It also improves the ecological environment and biodiversity by absorbing & capturing rainwater and using it to scale back floods.
- Sponge city policies are nature-based solutions, which use natural landscapes for catching, storing and cleaning water.
- This idea was inspired by the ancient wisdom of adaptation to climate challenges, specifically in the monsoon world.
Sponge Cities Mission In India
- The main idea of the sponge city is to form cities more permeable to carry and use water that falls upon it.
- These can all be delivered effectively by an urban mission along the lines of National Heritage City Development & Augmentation Yojana (HRIDAY), Atal Mission for Rejuvenation & Urban Transformation (AMRUT), and Smart Cities Mission.
The necessity of Sponge Cities Mission in India
- Urban flooding has become a recurring phenomenon in Indian metros.
- India’s Land policy has not effectively managed or controlled the recurrence of significant floods in urban areas.
- Urban cities lack a proper drainage network.
- Concrete structures in urban cities are causing water wastage.
