But, despite a rude reminder in 1994, the embankment scheme remained 724 m short of completion till last year, when yet another flood played havoc in city. Shaken out of its stupor in September, the State government decided to review the flood embankment programme, which had been shelved in 1975 after the completion of the Ukai dam.

By the time the nod the Surat Municipal Corporation received the nod to complete the embankment within the city limits (the Irrigation department was to undertake the project from Khatod to Magdalla), however, seven months had elapsed.

It is difficult to see why the go-ahead took so long to come, since experts are unanimous a high embankment wall is a basic flood protection measure. At present, the Tapi carries 3.5 lakh cusecs of water; the wall will increase this to 5 lakh cusecs. Had the wall been built before last year, the impact of the floods would have been much less.

Nevertheless, when the SMC finally started work on the wall, it ran into another hurdle: the land at the Bharimata Tunki area -- the first point to be breached by the flood waters -- belonged to someone who refused to part with it.

``Because of this acquisition problem, there was some delay in starting the work'', says city engineer K M Parekh. The monsoon has further messed up the building schedule. ``We need at least 15 dry days to complete the work. It seems impossible now'', says an executive engineer of the Irrigation department.

Though District Collector Sangeeta Singh has since expedited the process of land acquisition under the `emergency clause', the Irrigation department is none too optimistic about completing the project on time. Perhaps more so, because now it has taken over the charge of building the embankment within the city limits as well, though the SMC will foot 50 per cent of the Rs 24 crores-bill; the rest being sponsored by the State government.

``The monsoons have already set in. So, though we started work on a war footing -- we didn't even float tenders to save time -- all we can hope to do is build a temporary structure'', says an Irrigation department engineer.