waterworks last Sunday.After all, the national water agency, PUB, had vowed to do all it could to protect businesses and buildings in the area, and elsewhere, after last year's flood.In the one year since two bouts of intense rain got dumped along the shopping avenue one morning, submerging the Scotts and Orchard Road junction, PUB had dived right into raising 1.4km of roads from Orchard Parade Hotel to Cairnhill Road to the tune of $26 million.

Yet, last Sunday, shoppers found themselves splashing about in ankle-deep water in Tanglin Mall while their groceries floated by. The Tanglin area has been spared floods for the past 25 years; last Sunday's washout surprised even PUB head Khoo Teng Chye.

So what happened? And why was it that the PUB's best efforts anetizen who works in the construction industry, fingered jet grouting as the culprit. Used to treat and stabilise soil, this process makes the soil impermeable to water, a problem compounded by the density of buildings in Orchard Road.

'So in effect, we have a bowl-shaped, rock-hard valley with Orchard Road in the middle,' he described.

New developments have come up along Orchard Road, which some say contribute to the floods in heavy rain. After all, the mammoth Ion Orchard mall was once a 1.86ha green lung.

A third group blames the Marina Barrage, and says water accumulating there simply wasn't pumped out fast enough into the sea, causing a backflow.

The Government has been quick to pooh-pooh both theories. In Orchard Road, it says, drainage capacity had been factored in before the