Only 478 lakes remain in the metropolitan region of Bengaluru, a city fabled to have had a thousand lakes once upon a time.Given the city's natural gradient that supports water bodies, are there undiscovered lakes that are not known to government records? Perhaps.
With this conviction, the Karnataka Lake Conservation and Development Authority (KLCDA) will spend the next three months looking for new lakes in and around the city. It has roped in space agency Isro for this exercise.
“When a water body gets dry, water has to find its own course and form new bodies elsewhere,“ KLCDA chief executive G Vidya Sagar told ET.
The mission is a follow-up to an inventory of lakes the Environmental Management and Policy Research Institute (EMPRI) has put together. The database has identified all the keres, kattes and kuntes in the metropolitan region of Bengaluru using revenue maps, topo sheets, satellite images and field visits. It found 478 lakes.
“We are cross-checking the EMPRI data with Isro through GIS mapping to see if new lakes have been formed that are not shown in any reports or records,“ Sagar said. “The job will be done in 90-120 days.“
At least 82 lakes have disappeared in the past decade, according to EMPRI data. The lakes have been replaced by roads, parks, temples, residential layouts, graveyards or farmland. The Kasaba Yeshwantpur lake, for instance, now has a hospital in its place.“Almost all roads in Bengaluru are on lake beds,“ Sagar said.
Even EMPRI does not rule out the possibility of new water bodies that might have gone off the radar. “It's a new area of research. If drainages are disrupted and channelled into lowlying areas, water bodies can come up,“ EMPRI director general Ritu Kakkar said.
Water expert S Vishwanath was amused. “British engineers, as early as the 18th century , concluded that water had been harvested wherever possible. There are no new lakes,“ he said.
All new tanks in South Karnataka, he said, were formed by throwing a bund across the valley and not due to natural depression. “The EMPRI report is comprehensive enough. We need to start acting on saving the lakes that have been identified.“
The KLCDA, unlike its predecessor, Lake Development Authority, has statutory powers to protect, conserve, reclaim, restore and integrate development of lakes. “I'm thinking of the present and the future,“ Sagar said, on discovering new lakes.
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