Five decades ago, Singapore’s rivers were a veritable cesspool of pollution. Legend has it that the PM, Lee Kuan Yew, gave a simple mission statement. One day fishing and humans swimming in the river and lakes should be possible. That simple directive led to a series of measures related to construction activities, area clean up, sanitation and more that fixed the water bodies.
Here in Bengaluru, we have frothing, snow like lakes filled with sewage and industrial effluents which catch fire from time to time. Bellandur lake has been ground zero in our collective consciousness and recently Varathur has been added to the mix. The official response is about locally fixing drains, desilting lakes, setting up STPs and a slew of intended projects often running into meaningless crores. This is supposed to be the panacea for fixing our problems and the system wishes us to believe that this time it will be done in a manner dramatically different from the past.
Fixing Bellandur or even Varathur in isolation, while nearly impossible, will not solve the problem. What we need is an integrated watershed management from the upper to middle, lower lake system to address associated problems of pollution, urban flooding and treatment of buffer zones mandated by the NGT. We need to work towards stopping sewage flowing into the lakes. The apartments around the lakes are bearing the brunt of the force of law, but they are a minor player given that our storm water drains are sewer channels across the city. Fast track the STP projects. By 2020 we will need as much capacity as we have today to be ahead of the curve on treating sewage. Assuming our STPs will work efficiently at full capacity is foolhardy.
Culprits dump debris around the lake periphery with a view to expand their property footprints. The government must put out GIS maps of all the urban commons particularly around the lakes. This will allow citizens to protect the city’s common assets. Urban flooding will recur once the rains set in and will need a planned response of desilting, redesigning drains, increasing drain capacity, planning for permeable land, resisting over concretization and redoing our road network too. Over time we must relink the complete lake network based on contours and ground realities. If these are not done, our cup of woes, it would seem, will continue to overflow and our lakes shall froth, catch fire and more.
V. Ravichandar, Urbanist
V. Ravichandar
Twitter@ravichandar
Author, an urban expert who is part of BBMP Restructuring Committee, calls himself the Patron Saint of Lost Causes