Row, row, row your boat in a dead lake

This motley crew will soon “transform” Bangalore’s 114 lakes and water bodies into tree parks and “recreation facilities”. But the fact is that by the time the lakes are “saved”, they probably won’t be lakes any longer! More like swimming pools and bath tubs. Why else would Bangalore’s least “preserved lake”, the Sankey tank, be in the best of shape, environmentally speaking? Simply because it has been left alone.

What is the salvation army’s modus operandi? From all indications, they don’t have any. There is no evidence of a well-thought out master plan worked out by people in the know of things. When the Hebbal lake restoration is done, it will be their “showpiece” to be replicated in each of the 34 live lakes of Bangalore. But environmentalists fear that engineering prescriptions to clean up will leave the lakes ecologically dead. Just as the Ulsoor and Yediyur lakes already are.

Hebbal lake has been drained and desilting is in progress. It has two new bird islands, and a jogging track. The engineered wetland at the lake mouth will biologically treat the sewage that flows into it. Further downstream is the Bangalore Water Supply and Sewerage Board’s sewage treatment plant. Once restoration is complete, there will be boating, and a park by the lake.

But can a living lake be created in this fashion? M.B. Krishna, an ornithologist, begs to disagree. “Why put up a bird box and expect birds to come? If you want birds, you better start taking them into consideration,” he says. The proposed bird islands will be accessible to boaters. So will it be a case of “enter human beings, exit birds”? Sad, because earlier, some 140 bird species were spotted in the city’s lakes, many of them migratory.

Boating was introduced thrice at the Lalbagh lake. Each time, expert committees found that boating adversely affected the presence of migratory birds. It was then discontinued only to be revived later.

The life of any lake is in its shoreline. The jogging track and the parks will make it ecologically fragile and bring humans too close for the birds’ comfort. Rather than bird islands, ornithologists want vegetated ridge lines and shores.

The present plans include foreshore afforestation, but they are open to the public as picnic spots, and environmentalists believe that this should not be the case. They would like observation points in the shoreline so that people, particularly children, can be educated about birds. But, at the same time, they argue that the intervening patches of green must be protected. In fact, they would like the lakes to become reserved parks within the city. In any case, under the UN wetland treaty that India has signed and ratified, the state is required to do just this. Article four of the Ramsar Convention states: “Each contracting party shall promote the conservation of wetlands and water fowl by establishing nature reserves on wetlands… and provide adequately for their wardening.”

The message is clear: Recreation and wildlife don’t mix.

Today, the Vidyaranyapura lake is officially “saved”, but the sewage treatment plant set up as part of the restoration project has shut down. This means that the sewage is back in the lake and every morning it stinks. The corporation officials say this happened because the inflow of sewage was more than expected and promise that the plant will soon start functioning with another aerator in place.

All three major sewage plants in the city are not working at optimal levels. According to Usha Ganesh, chairperson, Bangalore Water Supply and Sewerage Board (BWSSB), against an actual capacity of 60 million litres a day (mld) the Hebbal plant treats only 40 mld. But Krishna believes that the corporation’s sewage management is an elaborate charade. Sewage doesn’t flow into Hebbal any longer, true, but it flows further downstream into the Nagavara lake. Observes Krishna: “They are diverting sewage. In the old days people used to do it without technology. Why do you need multi-crore projects to do this?”

What this clearly demonstrates is a lack of vision and understanding of Bangalore’s lake system. All the city lakes are man-made impoundments across streams and they form chains. For example, in the Hebbal lake system are the two Narasipura lakes, Tindlu, Hebbal and Nagavara. Multipoint sewage entry takes place in all of them. Cleaning up Hebbal and not the others means that when Hebbal overflows the water will drain into the Nagavara, where there is no sewage treatment. Building plants for each lake would mean a huge, and unnecessary, expenditure, especially when the BWSSB is not able to maintain the three existing sewage plants in good working condition.

The 1985 Lakshman Rau Committe report on lakes still remains the Bible for the government. Narendra K.V., director, Urban Research Centre, calls it “a rotten bit of work”. Many of the lakes mentioned in the report do not exist. No survey was done nor any lake visited by the committee. The different departments were simply asked to give a list of the lakes under their jurisdiction.

The government has the resources to do detailed wetland mapping of Karnataka with remote sensing satellites. A Rs 1 crore tank status mapping project is awaiting government funds. Once that comes through, a wetland policy for Karnataka would, hopefully, emerge.

Incidentally, there is no shortage of funds. The Norwegians pumped in Rs 3 crore to save Hebbal and Madivala. Agaram could also have been attended to, but cost overruns made finances sufficient only for the first two. Of the 34 live lakes in the city, three Vidyaranyapura, Vasanthpura and Madivala — are saved. Ten more are in the process of being tackled. In terms of financing, a Rs six-lakh loan from Hudco under the mega city scheme; Rs 200 lakh from the state government; Rs 15 lakh in World Bank funds, and aid from the Environment Foundation, an Indo-Canadian organization, have come through. Happy with the progress of the work, the Norwegians could pump in a second round of funds. Apart from this, at least 20 dry lakes in the city will be converted into tree parks with aid from the Japan Banking for International Cooperation.

But the irony is that without a holistic vision the money coming in to save Bangalore’s lakes may just go down its stagnant sewage drains.