BENGALURU: Echoing what the NGT and residents have said, experts too feel that the work done to clean up Bellandur Lake in the past one month is not up to the mark.
Environmentalist A N Yellappa Reddy said any industry that causes pollution must be shut down. “Deweeding is not a difficult task. But they should also come up with a mechanism to dispose of the weeds. Also, we can definitely ensure that treated water flows into the lake. All they have to do is clear some encroachments and design a wetland at entry points of the inlets, so that water gets automatically treated. But all these require proper coordination among authorities,” he said.
Akshay Heblikar, director of environmental NGO Eco Watch, said agencies could finish 60-70 per cent of the work in about eight months by accomplishing some critical tasks. But he said he hasn’t seen any progress on these tasks in the past one month. “They could have taken up desilting immediately. Also they haven’t checked if STPs are working. They also haven’t followed the NGT’s order on shutting down industries,” he said.
Ram Prasad, convener of Friends of Lakes, said, “Some parts of the lake have been fenced off, which would never have happened earlier because of the land mafia.” But he was skeptical of government’s most visible work -- deweeding -- saying that the machines were working at a slow pace.
Speaking about BWWSB’s move to carry out bio-remediation, he added, “We would like to know whether they’ve done this before, and if they have, where? And what enzymes or chemicals do they plan to use?”
Expressing sympathy for small-scale dyeing units, he said, “Nobody has told them what to do. If you shut them down, where will they go?”