Flood Control, or Flood Creation?

A couple of days ago some of us were talking about all the changes that were happening in Colombo. As readers of this blog might have noticed, these changes do not happen without some heartache for many of us old residents, though of course the real impact is on those residents who are being displaced or losing their homes and whose voices are not always heard on the likes of this blog.  For them it is much, much worse.  But read more about that here.

Our recent conversation was whether the beautification, a component, albeit a small component,  of the Metro Colombo Urban Development Project funded by the World Bank and which is, in essence, a flood control project was being monitored in its implementation, especially its accelerated CHOGM implementation.  We rather cynically observed, that if the new developments had not taken issues of drainage into account, they could result in more flooding, which of course would go contrary to the whole objectives of the project.. and lo and behold!  not very many days after this discussion,  that is exactly what happened.  Last evening's magnificent downpour did cause several places to be submerged!

See the Sunday Times Photo Focus "New Look Colombo fails rain test" with story and pix by Susanha Liyanawatta and Hasitha Kulasekera.   Pictures below from the Sunday Times Article.






Wonder what the World Bank will have to say about this...

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