Attendees (meeting): Manjari, Shekar, Deepak, Sanjay, Naveen, Srivatsava, Pranav, Ritesh, Neha.
Prof.Ramachandra and his group of students - Durga, Alka, Gururaj, Bhumi etc.
(Apologies if I did not capture everybody's names correctly. Please send corrections)
Praja team introduced itself. Prof. R was familair with Praja via the (previous) CISTUP meeting.
The Prof. walked us through his group website and gave an introduction to their activities in the Ecology and Energy area. While the gorups primary interest is in the ecology ofthe western ghats, they have also been looking at Bangalore and its lakes due to interest and requests from various govt and non govt folks.
One of the students, Alka, discussed the study of BDA restored lakes in Bangalore with respect to their ecology. It appears that the restoration process is unscientific resulting in the destruction of the ecology of the lakes. By digging the sides of the lake to increase capacity and destroying the gentle slope, the favorite nesting area for birds is destroyed., In addition, the process followed of pumping out water and desilting often destroys the naturally occuring flora and fauna.
Instead of pumping out all the water before desilting, wet dredging may be a better process.
Lakes (almost all lakes) receive sewage through storm water drains and also from untreated sewage and other hazardous waste such as chemical waste and building construction / demolotion wate dumped by private parties. Examples were shown in the presentation.
Evidence and examples of land encroachment in the Bellandur lake area were shown. Ideally, the flood plain of the lake should be effectively kept free of encroachment. many plants in these flood plains (wetlands) are also important sources of cleaning water.
The meeting concluded with a commitment to discuss within the Praja framework and see how we could contribute to spread awareness about and tacking these problems, which is among the most serious facing Bangalore today.
NOTE: Prof. Ramachandra reminded us of the brainstorming session on conservation and management of urban lakes on September 26th and invited all interested to participate. (I have provided a link in an earliest post in this series).
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"Evidence and examples of land encroachment in the Bellandur lake area were shown. Ideally, the flood plain of the lake should be effectively kept free of encroachment. many plants in these flood plains (wetlands) are also important sources of cleaning water. "
Not only that, we have no idea of the danger it poses to the buildings themselves when they are constructed in the catchment area, against the recommended guidelines.
Also check out this article on citizen matters. http://bangalore.citizenmatters.in/articles/view/244-lakes-development
It talks of the Dilip Kumar Committee report which Dr Ramchandran had mentioned. Pretty depressing I must say.
Shekhar
Lakes - A Scathing Report
I'm glad that Dr.PJ Dilip Kumar (Principal Chief Conservator of Forests, Karnataka) has indicted the LDA & the authorities in his report.
At least now, the government is forced to take a serious re-look at it's lake privatization policy. This had, in any case, resulted in nothing more than encouraging private parties to set up amusement parks on the real estate by lake shores in the name of lake restoration.
copy of the Dilip Kumar report?
Does anyone have a copy of this report? If so, please send me a link or forward it via email. I searched online, to no avail.
Using the lake to clean the lake
One of the students, Alka, discussed the study of BDA restored lakes in Bangalore with respect to their ecology. It appears that the restoration process is unscientific resulting in the destruction of the ecology of the lakes.
A constructed wetland would work really well at restoring some of those lakes (Source: Wikipedia).
TM
TM