Essel Towers came into existence in 2001-02 with 7-10 high-rise residential towers with a total population of about 1100 families. It was constructed on land which was about 5-7 feet below the main road level. The Builder, Essel Housing, did not raise the level of the land by sand filling and instead constructed the infrastructure, inside roads etc at the same level, thus making it prone to water logging particularly the main gate and main entrance road during monsoon season. Therefore, for the last 20 years or so, the residents had been suffering because of 2-3 feet of water logging inside Essel Tower and for hours, the residents got locked inside their buildings. The builder did provide four rainwater harvesting pits but soon those got saturated and the water logging increased year after year, with the result that many cars used to get damaged every year and residents could not go out even for emergency services. This was one reason why the value of Essel Towers was not increasing compared to other complexes in spite of being a prime location property.
Essel Towers residents started looking into this problem and tried to find solutions. We constructed another RWH system at the main gate using maintenance funds but that had little effect for some years and soon that RWH also became redundant. During rains, a large quantity of rainwater used to enter Essel Towers from the main roads from both sides – the main gate as well as the other gate on the Sushant Lok 1 side.
Brij Gupta, who is a technocrat from the oil industry who had worked on several oil and petrochemical projects outside India, started working on this project and took up the matter with MCG and GMDA. Several meetings were held with the MCG Commissioner and a project report was prepared by our own experts, to solve the water logging problems. The Project consisted of two parts – The construction of humps at the entrance of both gates so as to minimize the water inflow from outside the Essel Towers and constructing an underground tank of 35000-litre capacity with three dewatering pumps at an estimated cost of about 35 lakhs. A Contract was also awarded by MCG in 2021, however, the contractor abandoned the project after six months for unknown reasons without even starting the work. At that time Essel Towers RWA, with the help of MCG, completed the first part of the project by using MCG’s internal resources of constructing the humps at the entrance of both gates.
We continued our follow-up with MCG for the re-award of the contract and with the help and support of MCG Councillor Rama Rani Rathi, a new contract was awarded to another contractor with project completion by July 2022. ETRWA provided the land outside the main gate for the underground tank. With little or no support coming from MCG Engineers, ETRWA took the responsibility of directly coordinating and following up with the contractor. The underground tank was constructed, pipelines were laid underground to the main storm water pit outside the main gate across the service lane and the contractor provided only two pumps instead of the three pumps required for the project.
As per our calculations, two pumps were required to be run continuously during rains and the third pump was a stand-by in case of failure of one of the pumps and could also be run in parallel to other two pumps in case of very heavy rains. But the contractor left the site without commissioning the system and it seems he got his payment from MCG also without verification of the bills from the ETRWA.
ETRWA themselves commissioned the project last year in July 2022. However, the problem of water logging was only partially solved due to frequent failure of the submersible pumps and the non-availability of a spare pump. Therefore, ETRWA decided to install the third pump using the maintenance funds of residents and we commissioned the third pump in April 2023 this year. The leftover work by the contractor like manhole covers on the tank, plastering and painting of the tank area etc were also completed by ETRWA and the whole area around the tank was also beautified by greenery. Thus the project was finally commissioned and put into service this year with very satisfactory results. Although, when the whole of Gurgaon was under water this year, we can proudly say that “Essel Towers was saved from water logging.
