BENGALURU: United Bengaluru, a coalition of citizen groups, under the aegis of Naagarika (a citizen watch committee) resolved to reclaim the city’s lakes, water bodies and wetlands at an interactive session in Town Hall here on Saturday.
They released a list of 208 lakes, location, their status, custody, wards they fall under,
corporator to contact, contacts of concerned MPs, MLAs, BBMP engineer, BDA engineer, KSPCB, BWSSB, KLCDA officers and police stations concerned.
Activist Sridhar Pabbisetty said, “It was difficult for lake groups and NGOs to get in touch with officials of their respective lakes. We have created a database of all officials responsible for a particular lake.”
Citizens can reach out to unitedbengaluru17@gmail.com and write about lakes in their vicinity. They can also reach out to the neighbouring police stations or authorities. United Bengaluru core group will fight it out legally for the citizens.
The members of the core group are — N S Mukunda, Prakash Belawadi, Naresh Narasimhan, Usha Rajagopalan, Nitin Sheshadri, Srinivas Alavilli, Sajan Poovayya, Sridhar Pabbisetty. It will be mentored by the expert group H S Doreswamy, Justice Santosh Hegde, V Balasubramaniam and AT Ramaswamy.
The talk was attended by Citizens Action Forum, Citizens for Bengaluru, Apartment Adda, Praja Raag, Bangalore Environment Trust, Civic, Friends of Lakes and various other NGOs, activists and RWAs.
V Balasubramanian, Former Additional Chief Secretary to Government of Karnataka, said, “As per 2011 census data there were about 25 lakh houses in BBMP area out of which only 12 lakh houses had a sewage connection. This means out of the 1,400 tonnes of daily human waste, more than 700 tonnes of human waste released into lakes were untreated.”
Environmentalist Yellappa Reddy said, “Instead of letting sewage into lakes they can be converted into organic manure, which can be used by farmers for cultivation. This can stop untreated sewage from getting into rajakaluves and eventually into lakes.”