As you lake it: The case of disappearing lakes of Bangalore

Early this summer, a couple of incidents threw the issue of Bangalore’s lakes back into the limelight. Not that they ever deserved to fade away from the headlines, but a couple of bizarre happenings at two lakes, and an order from the National Green Tribunal (NGT) over unauthorised constructions has since ensured that the issue does not disappear all over again, as many lakes themselves have.

In the last week of April this year, the 445-acre Varthur lake near the Whitefield area simply bubbled over. It sprouted white froth that spilled over to the neighbourhood roads. The toxic foam – an unwelcome mix of detergents, pollutants and faecal matter – had everyone sit up and speak out in alarm. The decay and gradual disintegration of Bangalore’s lakes had been known to all and sundry, but this was a shocker. Unfortunately, this was not all. Barely two weeks later, foam from Bangalore’s largest waterbody, the massive Bellandur, caught fire. This set alarm bells ringing.

Coincidentally, a context to bizarre foam-and-fire incidents came in the form of an NGT order that imposed damages of Rs 117.35 crore and Rs 22.5 crore on two real estate companies for degrading the environment. The tribunal also directed the Union government to stop sanctioning ventures on wetlands and catchment areas of water bodies in the city. The two companies – Mantri Techzone Pvt Ltd and Core Mind Software and Services Pvt Ltd – were directed to pay up for the “illegal and unauthorised” construction activities carried out in violation of the environmental laws.

The bench, headed by NGT chairperson Justice Swatanter Kumar, said the project proponents were “intentional defaulters” and constituted a committee to make a survey of the ecologically sensitive area on the land between the Bellandur and Agara lakes. It also restrained them from creating any third party interest or part with the possession of the property in question till the panel comes out with a report.

The bench made its observations, and the devil lay in the details. It said, “There is sufficient material by way of reports, Google Images and other documents that the Bellandur Lake and even other lakes for that matter have wetlands and catchment areas. There are encroachments on the rajakaluves as well as on the catchment areas of the water bodies. Furthermore, the stop-work notices issued by different authorities from time to time also suggest that the work and progress of the projects was in violation of the laws in force. The cumulative effect of the above discussion would be that there is a definite possibility of environment, ecology, lakes and the wetlands being adversely affected by these projects.”

The NGT’s comments, as such, were nothing new. There have been innumerable High Court orders and observations on Bangalore’s lakes. The Karnataka government and a host of civic agencies have been repeatedly pulled up over their failure to save the city’s lakes from being encroached, polluted or simply over-run. There is enough documentary evidence about how the waterbodies have paid the price for the city’s unbridled growth, and there are enough reports and action plans outlining what needs to be done.

Citizen’s groups and never-say-die environmentalists fighting for the protection and rejuvenation of lakes, have been crying themselves hoarse for years. The occasional reports and fewer court orders have always made for good stories. Unfortunately, they appear one day, and ease out of public memory the very next. The contention that nothing happens is borne out of the fact that in spite of the meticulous and damning research studies and the scathing court judgments, the regression on the lake front has been unabated. No one has been answerable, or taken to task.

If Bellandur and Varthur lakes resembled overflowing washing machines, those shouldn’t have come as surprises: such environmental disasters were always on the cards. The consequences of polluting and choking Varthur lake had long been laid threadbare and predicted by a number of research studies. For instance, the Energy and Wetlands Research Group at the Centre for Ecological Sciences (CES), Indian Institute of Science (IISc) has conducted five studies of the Varthur lake alone.

The last of the studies, published in January 2011, had dwelt at length on anthropogenic activities taking a toll on the lake. The study had remarked, “Higher values of BOD (biological oxygen demand), COD (chemical oxygen demand), nitrates and phosphates reveal that lake water is severely contaminated... Profuse growth of water hyacinth limits air water interface, light penetration and consequently there is a drop in the penetration of atmospheric oxygen as well as algal photosynthetic activities...”

The subject featured prominently in another CES study that was released a month after the Bellandur incident. Titled ‘Pathetic status of wetlands in Bangalore: Epitome of inefficient and uncoordinated governance, this was a technical report from ENVIS. The study revealed that 54 per cent of lakes in the city have been encroached upon for construction activities and turned into garbage dump yards. The researchers also found that 66 per cent of the lakes were fed with sewage, 14 per cent surrounded by slums and 72 per cent had lost their catchment areas.

Worse: all the 206 lakes in Bangalore had been encroached upon to different extents for some or the other purpose. The ones responsible for the lakes were the Bangalore Development Authority (BDA), Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP), state minor irrigation department, state forest department, and the Lake Development Authority (LDA). They had all failed in protecting the lakes.

The CES team studied the lakes and found the decay to be rampant and all-pervading. The lakes at Kalkere, Uttarahalli and Kodihalli have been encroached upon for illegal dumping of garbage, while buildings have cropped up around Amruthahalli, Vibhutipura and Ramasandra lakes. Almost all of Chikpetahalli lake in Vidyaranyapura has been buried under debris. The construction of an 18-storied apartment complex near Sankey lake, stalled in 2002, has resumed. More than 30 acres of the lakebed at Varthur has been encroached upon for apartments, commercial buildings and infrastructure facilities. Except for the fenced off Ulsoor lakes, all are under threat. Stormwater drains and water outlets do not exist, and buffer zones mandated under the norms of the Ministry of Environment and Forests, BDA’s rules, Karnataka Town and Country Planning Act of 1961, Wetlands (Conservation and Management) Rules of 2010 and Wetlands Regulatory Framework 2008 too do not exist.

The latest report, in many ways, wraps up the both the warnings and words of wisdom from earlier studies, many of which have been conducted by Ramachandra himself. In fact, the modern history of Bangalore’s lakes is a history of fact-finding reports and scientific studies that have been ignored by governments, irrespective of political affiliation. These have dominated public discourse occasionally, but haven’t had any effect on policy-making or made polluters pay either.

The Karnataka government, reacting to the Varthur disaster, ordered a land survey. News reports in August suggested that the findings were far worse than what the ENVIS report had outlined. The survey, settlement and land records department, according to the reports, identified over 1,000 lakes that had not been listed by the district authorities earlier for the survey. In Bangalore Urban district, the department found details of 464 lakes which were not included earlier by district authorities while giving its report to the house committee, which is investigating the issue of lake encroachments. In Bangalore Rural district, 667 lakes were found which were not included earlier. These apart, the department also found 1,281 small ponds and waterbodies in urban limits and 1,079 in rural areas.

While it is easy and convenient too to blame politicians and the real estate “mafia” for the disappearance of Bangalore’s lakes, it is more difficult to take collective responsibility for the same. Builders only gobble up lakes, and politicians facilitate or connive at the process. But at the end of the day, it is the ordinary citizen who is the end-consumer: one who benefits from the death of the lake ecosystem. Yet, Bangalore’s civic response has an interesting tale there.

The ones who are resisting the decay of the lakes are actually citizen’s groups. The rejuvenation of the Puttenahalli lake in South Bangalore and the persistent and determined efforts to save the Bellandur lake, are just cases in point. There are innumerable ground-level groups that have been collaborating with each other, exchanging notes, and strategising further.

Leo Saldanha of the city-based Environment Support Group (ESG), who has done relentless and exemplary work in campaigning for the lakes, had once put it across to this writer succinctly, “Communities almost everywhere are begging to be involved in protecting local waterbodies. They have a direct and tangible benefit in doing so. Unfortunately, highly centralised structures of governance have denied them statutory opportunities of being involved, including the hare-brained schemes of the privatisation of waterbodies, which actually distance communities from protecting lakes.”

Eventually, it would be the people of the city who will save its lakes.