Carmelites heed the green call, march for Bellandur lake's cause

Plan to submit proposal to clean Bellandur lake to BWSSB

To spread awareness on the pathetic state of Bellandur lake and draw the government’s attention, five students from Mount Carmel College undertook a march to the water body on Saturday.

Final year BSc students Sanjana Chevalam, Asprit Kaur, Namgay Choden, Manasi Anand and Anamitra Chatterjee have taken it upon themselves the task of creating awareness in this regard. Holding placards with messages on lakes and environment, the students - along with around 50 like-minded volunteers, marched from Hotel Novotel, Central Mall to the lake.

They spoke to the visitors as to how those staying close to the water body are suffering due to the water contamination there. Streetplays were staged to create awareness among the citizens during the march.

Kaur said that they visited the lake for research a year ago as part of an inter-university competition on water resource management.

She said, “The competition is held by TERI university, Delhi and they wanted us to come up with a proposal to clean the water body in our area. We zeroed in on Bellandur lake and prepared a list of possible solutions in our proposal, along with our findings.”

In the proposal, the students have stressed the need to reduce phosphates in Bellandur lake through an environment friendly multi-stage treatment process.

To tackle plastic waste, they have suggested setting up of a screening process (through a bamboo mesh) at one of the inlets to the lake, so that macromolecular pollutants do not enter the water body.

“These pollutants will be made to accumulate in a sedimentation tank. Bentonite clay will be used to trap the organic pollutants and heavy metals. We found from our lab tests that the oxygen content in the lake is very low. An aerating fountain can be set up to aerate the lake uniformly and improve oxygen content,” said Chatterjee.

The students are planning to develop a model in their college lab based on their research. They plan to meet the authorities of Bangalore Water Supply and Sewerage Board (BWSSB) with their proposal, once they get the full lab results.