Has the flood come or has the river and stream asked for his area back?
After heavy rains on Monday morning, all the rivers in the Kathmandu Valley were flooded. Bhel of Bagmati, Bishnumati and Manohara crossed the corridor road in many places and entered the settlement.
The sight of riverside settlements sinking during the rainy season is not new to Kathmandu. For many years, different parts of Kathmandu have been inundated after heavy rains in every rainy season.
The rivers flowing inside the capital remain frozen throughout the winter and enter the settlement in search of their floodplain in the rainy season. Vaikaji Tiwari, the former commissioner of the Upatyaka Development Authority, says that it will be difficult for the people of the Upatyaka to get rid of this problem as the river has entered the river and not the settlement.
"In the past, people have neglected to leave the floodplain," he said.
According to Tiwari, Kathmandu could have largely got rid of this problem if the post-multi-party governments had implemented a Panchayat-era decision.
While creating the 'Department of Urban Development and Building Construction' in 2045 BS, the then Minister of Housing and Physical Planning, Dr Prakash Chandra Lohani had envisioned a 'city safe from floods in the future.
He recalls that he decided to maintain a 50/50 meter 'right-left swing area after the river-river banks in the Kathmandu Valley started encroaching. According to him, according to the rules, there was an open bank of 100 meters on the left and right sides except for the flow area of the river.
At that time, it was planned to plant trees on the empty banks of the river. "The river needs its banks, and the flow area needs to be adequate," says Lohani.
However, after the restoration of the multi-party system on the strength of the people's movement, the democratic government formed in 2047 BS reversed the 'retrogressive decisions'.
"If the rivers had been left to flow naturally, Kathmandu would not be inundated today," said Lohani, who became a minister in the multi-party system. This city would be different. '
Kathmandu's rivers are responding to the 'challenge' given by the people. Lohani explains. He said that the city had lost its vitality and had to face more problems while trying to destroy the river civilization. He says, "It cannot be said that the rivers of Kathmandu will not give a bigger answer than now."
Tiwari, a former commissioner of NEA, says that the problem of flooding in Kathmandu with a little more rain has been solved at a time when the Panchayat-era decision has been revoked.
"If the decision to keep the bucket area had been made, there would have been bugs in the rivers now," he said.
After the decision to leave 50/50 meters of a setback in all rivers was reversed, different setbacks were decided in different rivers and streams according to the interests of the land mafia.
At present, Bagmati, Bishnumati and Manohara have 20/20 meter setbacks. Similarly, 9/9 m in Dhobikhola, 12/12 m in Nakhu river, 12/12 m in Sangla river, 10/10 m in Mahadevkhola, 10/10 m in Balkhukhola and 4/4 m in other small rivers/creeks have been fixed.
Tari on the bucket, Karesabari on the tar
Motiratna Bajracharya, 78, of Lalitpur, Patan, says that no one understands that rivers are like nerves for a city like a human body. "Black blood (water) flows in the veins (rivers) of the city all winter long," he says. That is what is happening today. '
He said that the rivers in the Kathmandu Valley have been made narrow by the government and land brokers.
It is fresh in the memory of Bajracharya that in his childhood when the floods came in the rainy season, he used to pull mudras in Bagmati and in Chait-Vaisakh, he drank water from Anjuli. "Now a cement deal has been made to shrink Bagmati," he says.
Bajracharya thinks that there should be arable land along the river. "My father used to say, 'Dole by the river, tari on the dolly, karesabari on the Tari,'" he says.
As Bajracharya said, there are no dolls now. People laid the foundation of their houses in the river so that they could get it cheaply. "How many have been deliberately greedy," he says, "how many have been caught by brokers."
Bajracharya suggests looking at the length and structure of the Shankhamul Bridge to understand the extent of the river in the past. The settlement is now under the bridge built in the entire downstream area of Bagmati.
Drowned by chaotic urbanization
In recent years, there has been unusually heavy rain (cloud burst) everywhere. Due to the heavy rains, the possibility of unimaginable floods in the rivers of Kathmandu seems to have increased.
The Meteorological Department of the Department of Water and Meteorology recorded 121.5 mm of rain at the Tribhuvan Airport Center from 1 am to 8:45 am on Monday. Meteorologists have called it 'very heavy rain.
This is the first time that there has been so much rain in September as the monsoon is approaching. Earlier, on September 12, 2008, Kathmandu received 84.3 mm of rain.
Water Resources Expert Pvt. Dr Narendraman Shakya says that Kathmandu usually does not receive more than 200 millimetres of rain in 24 hours. Due to the river bank infrastructure, it is seen that even the floods of that rainy season cannot be stopped.
‘Settlements have been set up in the name of squatters by encroaching even the narrow areas designated as river setbacks’ Pvt. Dr Shakya says, "Even in the uninhabited setback area, the rivers have been further narrowed by constructing corridor roads."
According to him, mainly unmanaged urbanization has brought the problem of flooding in Kathmandu. Looking at the height of the road and the wall built for it in the downstream area of the river, it seems that the government has built the infrastructure based on 'Don't drown every year, it's okay to have a big flood once in five years. Dr Shakya explains.
He said that the problem was compounded when roads, sewers, buildings and other urban infrastructures were built without paying attention to the rising water level. According to him, there is no flood control infrastructure in the settlements settled along the river bank with or without plotting.
‘There was a plan to leave the vast Bahab area by acquiring land in Dhobikhola, but the people refused to give the land,’ Pvt. Dr Shakya says, "Even the people living along the river seem to be ready to face floods once a year instead of leaving some land for systematic urbanization."
Tiwari, a former commissioner of NEA, says that if the 'corridor road' is not paved, there will be a problem of erosion. Tiwari said that in the past, the land mafia had occupied the natural flow area in various ways either in the name of river uplift or under the pretext of Mohiani Haq and the government had not taken appropriate steps to stop it.
"The main problem is that the river flow is shrinking. If there was no corridor road, the banks would be cut off in the rain and more water would enter the settlement," he said. If the corridor road had not been built, the setback would have been grabbed by the land mafia( river). '