Restore Bellandur, other lakes, reduce pressure on Cauvery

A lake catching fire is an epochal event. Bellandur made news in the BBC, CNN, France News, TokyoTV,The Guardian etc around the world. The last time a lake burned was in 1969 when Cuyahoga river joining Erie Lake near Cleveland, USA started burning from dumping of sewage and industrial pollutants. This compelled the Nixon administration to create the Environment Protection Agency in 1970 and Clean Water Act in 1972. Afterwards, no lake is burning in the US.

In Karnataka, the BWSSB was established in 1964 and the Water (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Act and the Pollution Control Board came into existence in 1974.

It speaks volumes of law-implementation the last 40 years when lakes of Bengaluru — the Land of a Thousand Tanks — have started supplying fire instead of water.

Human excreta is a taboo subject and is coyly termed “night soil” because traditionally, it was manually collected in pots mixed with soil especially from rich people’s homes, usually in the night. It has been used as fertiliser in China for centuries. In Chinese, the word for fertiliser and human excreta is the same. It is not realised that Bengaluru is drowning in its own excreta.

Consider this: the per capita per day generation of excreta generated in India is 128 grams which is half the well-fed developed country’s inhabitants. The BBMP’s population is 1.1 crore (and of metropolitan region-1.3 crore) and each day’s generation of excreta is 1,400 tonnes.

Of the 25 lakh households in the BBMP area according to the Census of India, excluding government and commercial buildings, the BWSSB’s water and drainage connection is hardly 12 lakh. Of this, only 70% of sewage is treated even according to the BWSSB. Therefore, at least 1,100 tonnes of human waste daily is not treated and it amounts to 4 lakh tonnes a year.

Where does this go? While the estimated 3,200 daily solid waste is sent to landfills and partly dumped into tanks, rajakaluves and roadsides, most of the untreated human waste in the form of domestic sewage finds its way into tanks and has made Bengaluru the Land of a Thousand Sewage Tanks.

Bellandur-Varthur is but one example. Byramangala, constructed in 1942 after impounding water in Vrishabhavathi river, has 1,046 acres of water spread area which is now filled with sewage from the city and industrial pollutants from the Bidadi industrial area. It has alarming levels of nitrate, chloride, total dissolved solids, heavy metals such as copper, nickel, chromium etc. Its top layer has formed into a solid crust of industrial and human waste.

It will be no surprise that when it starts burning, it will be solid waste burning for days and it will spread all along the Vrishabavathi river for over 5 km of sewage. Yemmalur, Iblur, Kaggadaspura, Doddanegundi, Rachenahalli, Ramenahalli, Kannenahalli and others are disasters waiting to happen. It would not be a surprise if these start attracting international tourists and Bengaluru’s new moniker would be “India’s Burning Valley” instead of Silicon Valley!

The problem is, it is not one or two lakes, but all the 189 lakes identified by the Justice N K Patil-headed Lakes Monitoring Committee in 2011, are storing sewage and industrial pollutants and are candidates for spontaneous combustion attributed to methane and ammonia. The Karnataka High Court, while hearing the petition of Environment Support Group against the leasing of four lakes, appointed the high-powered Justice Patil Committee which specified 189 bigger and 318 smaller tanks within the BBMP limits for restoration.

The CEO of the Lake Development Authority (now Lake Conservation and Development Authority) was its secretary. Within two years, the Committee became defunct. Meanwhile, LCDA was given legal teeth in 2016 to protect lakes in urban areas and prosecute dumping of sewage and industrial waste. But, except the change in the name-board from LDA to LCDA, nothing else changed. This is attributed to lack of budget provision and staff!

Bengaluru’s tragedy
The tragedy of Bengaluru is, the BWSSB gave up lakes after 1974 when the Cauvery Water Supply Scheme started and drainage was not paid any attention with 60-year old drainage-pipes still continuing. Even now, half of the city is dependent upon the 4,00,000+ borewells (it is anybody’s guess what the actual number is), and these borewells pump out 3.72 times groundwater than the annual recharge from rain. It does not require rocket science to realise that at this rate, Bengaluru will dry out within a decade, the proof being the increasing depth of borewells beyond 1,200 feet and still dry.

The lake’s sewage water keeps percolating down the dry crevices and space underground and contaminate the borewells. Bengalureans do not realise that even according to the Public Health Institute of the government, 39% of water supplied is not potable and 19% contain the dreaded Escherichia coli, intestinal infection from which will require blood transfusion and dialysis.

A former chief minister of Karnataka used to boast that he will make Bengaluru the Singapore of India. Well, his dream has come true. The only difference is, Singapore is drinking 30% of its waste water after tertiary-treating and bottling it as NEWater, while Bengalureans are drinking untreated sewage!

The BWSSB cannot draw more than 29 tmc of water which is 2,200 MLD gross and, after reducing leakage even to 16% from its present 36%, the net will be 1,800 MLD. The domestic demand of 1.5 crore population at 130 lpcd within a decade will be 2,000 MLD plus, non-domestic demand 500 MLD — 2,500 MLD and deficit of 700 MLD.

The water spread of lakes in BBMP area is 10,200 acres and in the Bengaluru Metropolitan Area 50,800 acres from 3,200 lakes. Even if one-fifth of the lakes are restored, an additional 500 MLD will be available to supplement the Cauvery water supply. Words cannot make this happen. An intolerable pressure on government may succeed.

(The writer is former Additional Chief Secretary, Government of Karnataka)