Why Lahore sinks whenever it rains in the city? 

The rain on July 22 almost sank most parts of Defence Housing Authority. Those low-lying areas of the city were also under water.

And this happened as the city was lashed with 343 millimetres of rain for two days, according to the Provincial Disaster Management Authority (PDMA).

That spell has gone and when you are reading these lines, the city is undergoing a second rain spell.

Pakistan’s Meteorological Department has issued a fresh weather advisory, warning that another active monsoon spell is expected from July 29 to August 5 across much of the country. The department said rain, wind and thundershowers, along with scattered heavy to very heavy rainfall, may trigger urban flooding, flash floods and landslides in vulnerable areas.

This will keep the residents of low-lying areas, mainly of Lahore’s south, and DHA on the toe.

Reacting to this advisory, environmental activist Rafay Alam explained why cities like Lahore keep flooding every monsoon season, and what is really behind the crisis. He said the Met Department had already notified that rain would continue for two days and people were warned in advance that urban flooding would take place, not just in Lahore, but in several cities across Punjab, including Gujranwala and Sialkot.

He then pointed to last year’s floods for comparison. “Those floods were caused by heavy rains in the northern areas of the country, which caused rivers to swell,” he said. On top of that, India had released water from the Pong Dam and Bhakra Dam. He said a gate at the Madhopur headworks also broke, causing water levels in the Ravi river to rise sharply.

Alam said the situation today is different. The flooding happening now is not caused by river floods or dam releases. Instead, it is simply due to heavy rainfall occurring within Pakistan itself.

He said that if people read the Met Department’s advisory carefully, the heaviest rain in the coming days is expected in the northern areas once again, not directly over Lahore. He advised people to check whether they live in low lying or high lying areas, since this makes a big difference during heavy rain.

However, he said that the real issue lies in the sheer intensity of rainfall being recorded now. “Some areas have received around 150 millimetres of rain within just a few hours,” he said. He added that 20 or 30 years ago, when the drainage systems and infrastructure in these areas were built, climate change was never part of the planning. Nobody at that time imagined that such intense rainfall could happen within just a few hours. As a result, the old infrastructure simply cannot handle the kind of rain Pakistan is now experiencing.

Dr Farid A Malik, a resident of Defence Phase 5, witnessed the entire flood attack first hand. He said that when he was growing up in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, rainwater never used to stand in Lahore. At that time, he said, the city was much smaller and the population was far lower, yet even then, the city did not face standing water after rainfall the way it does today.

“Whenever the rain would stop, we children used to go out on our bicycles looking for standing water, just for fun. And there were really only two places where water would collect. One was near Shahdara, and another was near the Do Moriya Pul area close to the railway station. That area of Shahdara was a low lying area,” he said.

He recalled that in the 1970s, when Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto’s government came into power, and the People’s Party had a lot of support from that area of Lahore at the time, the government promised that they would install pumps in Shahdara and set up a proper system to drain the water out. And they actually did this. Heavy duty pumps were installed in Shahdara, and they used to successfully drain the water out.

Dr Farid said the sewerage system Lahore has today simply cannot handle rainwater, because the amount of water that comes with heavy rain is very large, and the system does not have the capacity to handle that much water. He explained there are two separate problems here. First, the underground sewerage system is not cleaned properly. The pipes, whether four feet wide or six feet wide, have become clogged with scaling inside them over time. So even though a pipe might be four or six feet in diameter, the actual open space left for water to pass through has shrunk down to just one or two feet, meaning the whole system does not flow properly.

Second, even if the sewerage system was clean, it still cannot handle rainwater on top of regular sewage. For this reason, Lahore used to have separate storm drains, called nalas in Urdu, which carried rainwater away separately into the Ravi river. Because of this separate system, rainwater never used to accumulate in the city.

He said this has changed because storm drains have been blocked, either through neglect or construction on top of them.
“An entire market has been built on top of a storm drain along Hall Road,” he said, adding that similar encroachment has happened along the Ravi river itself. Last year, water that should have gone into the river ended up flowing into housing societies instead.

Dr Farid also pointed out that when Lahore had open drains instead of an underground sewerage system, the drainage actually worked better. Since the city moved underground, cleaning has become irregular, flow has suffered, and pumping stations work only some of the time.

He said Lahore’s expansion added to the problem, since new areas were given sewerage systems but no proper storm drain network for rainwater. DHA, he said, expanded in phases over the years without any master plan covering how sewage and rainwater would both be managed.

Speaking about his own neighbourhood, Dr Farid said there is a pumping station near the Sui Gas Society area of Defence that pumps sewage water from DHA Phase 4 and Phase 5 into the Rohi Nala. During heavy rain, this station is switched off out of fear that its motors could burn out, causing water to accumulate. Once rain stops, the station is switched back on. He said he does not know what drainage arrangements exist for other DHA phases.

“Until there is one holistic master plan for the entire city, this problem will keep happening,” he said, adding that such a plan needs to address where storm drains will be located, how rainwater will be carried away, and where water can be stored instead of wasted. He said all existing drains need proper cleaning to remove years of silt and garbage, and the whole system needs evaluation to see what percentage of its capacity it is actually working at.

Rain season always keeps WASA officials busy. Managing director Ghufran Ahmed said growing public and media scrutiny keeps his staff under constant pressure to perform.

He said WASA has almost finished 52 schemes worth Rs 25.06 billion aimed at controlling flooding and improving drainage across the city. Of these, 10 schemes costing Rs 7.4 billion are focused specifically on rainwater storage. Another 26 schemes, worth Rs 9.16 billion, are replacing old sewer lines that have outlived their usefulness. Six more schemes, budgeted at Rs 1.70 billion, will replace 55 outdated machines, while the Haji Camp Drain project alone carries a cost of Rs 4.10 billion.

Ahmed pointed out that overlapping responsibilities among different agencies handling water supply, sewerage and drainage often create confusion and cause delays. He said WASA has recommended that all these functions be placed under a single agency to improve coordination.

Officials say throwing solid waste into drains and sewers only worsens flooding, and stricter enforcement is needed to stop this practice. Ahmed said Lahore’s 195 parks and open spaces currently sit on high ground, making them unable to hold rainwater. His proposed fix is to lower these parks so they can serve as temporary water holding spaces.

WASA has already begun lowering ground levels in 140 parks, with 66 marked high priority. Work is complete in 13, ongoing in seven, and pending in 120. The plan keeps parks two feet below road level.

Results are visible already. At Gol Bagh Park in Shadbagh, lowering the ground by one foot cut ponding time from two hours to just one.