In August this year, many parts of Bengaluru were submerged.

But this was not a result of the amount of rainfall it got. Bengaluru’s lakes aren’t able to contain water.

The unstored rain water overflowed into the city, bringing normalcy to a halt.

When a place receives rainfall, the excess water flows into lakes and other water bodies for storage and future use. This is the ideal way.
But today, every major city faces flooding because the lakes and stormwater drains aren’t maintained to take in the water or worse, don’t exist anymore.

Rapid urbanization is one of the main reasons for the disappearance of Bengaluru’s lakes.

Bengaluru has 210 lakes covering 3622 acres. According to the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP), 303 acres have been encroached.

According to the BBMP, around 303 of 3,622 acres under 210 lakes in the city have been encroached.

To avoid such disasters in the future, the BBMP authorities started a drive against illegal encroachments on storm-water drains.

So far, the body has managed to recover only 46 acres. BBMP officials admit that parts of most lakes in the city have been encroached upon over a period of time by various builders.

Some are tech parks, developers, schools and colleges, and even government agencies and departments.

But the removal of these encroachments has roadblocks.

The first step of the removal process is the identification of encroached areas. But there aren’t enough surveyors to do this.

After identification comes the legal hurdles. Officials say that the property owners go to court and bring a stay order. This leads to more delay till the legal battle settles.

The city typography is such that lakes and storm-water drains play a very important role to make sure that the water flows smoothly without creating a flood-like situation.

However, now both links are being encroached upon. Authorities say that all the vulnerable areas located in the Vrushabhavathi, Hebbal, Koramangala, and Challaghatta valleys are causing flooding.

The BBMP said a total of 162 lakes were filled to the brim, of which 126 breached.

Lake conservation experts say that the water-holding capacity of the lakes has severely come down.

A study shows that in the year 1800, the city’s water bodies had a cumulative capacity to hold 35 tmcft of water.

The average rainfall the city receives today is estimated around 15 tmcft of water. This year, it was only marginally higher.

With no programme to desilt lakes regularly, the water-holding capacity of lakes is severely compromised.

Experts believe that the lakes may not have been desilted over the last three decades.

A depth-measurement survey of the Bellandur lake estimated 7.3 million cubic metres of silt sedimentation in the lake in 2016. Desilting has been taken up since then.

There are several lake rejuvenation projects going on across the city. This has been happening over the last five years.

Some of the lakes have been desilted, but seem to be no better compared to earlier. Experts feel that even if they are desilted, it cannot be restored to original capacity.

The process of desilting is not being done with an understanding of the materials that are clogging Bengaluru’s lakes and SWDs.

JCBs are used on the lake bed. This leads to compacting of silt with construction debris, sewage, plastic and other materials.

It creates an impermeable concrete-like layer of what is called slag. Water cannot seep into this layer.

Earlier, the silt was used by farmers because it was considered fertile. But now, it is majorly composed of pollutants.

So, the disposal of the silt also becomes a challenge.

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