Bellandur Buzz
Issue # 24
Dec 5th 2014
This fornightly newsletter is published by the citizen group bellandur-forum@googlegroups.com
Highlights from the city…
– On December 4th BBMP’s Environment engineer Mamtha and Health Inspector Bhargava did a check on apartments on Kasavanahalli road. Astro Silverwood and Wamma Ibbanee were fined for non-segregation of waste. Confident Phonenix was given notice to start resident training by this weekend. SJR verity was found to be a role model apartment managing their waste very responsibly, producing only 45kgs of reject waste for 320 odd apartments. Total Mall and HM Symphony have also been fined as they were draining their STP treated water into storm water drain.
– Citizen Matters wins Manthan Award (South Asia & Asia Pacific) in e-News and Journalism category! 6 awards in 6 years!
– December 3rd is International Day of Persons with Disabilities. Kaikondarahalli Lake finds mention in Times of India as an accessible lake for people with disabilities.
– India inclusion summit was held on ORR at Park Plaza Hotel with some high profile speakers like Arun Shourie, Naseeruddin Shah and Arnab Goswami. Priya Ramasubban, local Bellandur resident and a filmmaker spoke about the journey so far with her movie Chuskit,a story of a paraplegic girl who wants to go to school. https://www.facebook.com/IndiaInclusionSummit
Green Glen Layout road completion
400 metres of road was completed from ORR to Green Glen Layout. In a remarkable show of cooperation, the residents volunteered and supported the contractor almost around the clock, by clearing traffic, providing water for the roller, providing floodlights at night, etc. They also ensured that no vehicles passed on the road till it set properly.
However, there’s a lull in the work which needs to be completed from HDFC to the Sobha Lakeview Clubhouse. Parking restrictions are urgently needed on the newly laid road as it has already started attracting a large number of taxis and vans that ferry workers to Salarpuria Softzone. The drivers are using the walls as urinals and food vendors are setting up stalls to feed these drivers.
Update courtesy: Nagesh and Subramanian Sankaran
GroundWater + Bio Diversity Survey
Christ University students and cadets
On 29th November, 110 NCC cadets and twelve students from Christ University helped with multiple surveys in the area around Sarjapura Road. The event was initiated because Christ University saw the work that MAPSAS was doing in the community and wanted to be part of this community effort. The university has also committed to MAPSAS to send zoology and chemistry students regularly to Kaikondrahalli lake to do fauna mapping and water testing.The surveys taken include:
- Understanding the water demands of the area
- An inventory of the borewells in the area
- A record of the biodiversity in the area
- Water quality of Kaikondahahalli and Kasavanahalli Lakes
They gathered information from a variety of sources, including friendly granite/marble factories, which shared details of the copious supplies from borewells in 1997 and people who ran away from the NCC cadets mistaking them for the police. The data from the survey can be found on http://biometrust.blogspot.in/2014/11/lake-bio-remediation-meeting.html
Update and pic: Shubha Ramachandran
Initiating Bio-Remediation of 15 lakes around Sarjapura Road
Discussing bio-remediation of lakes
BIOME, WIPRO, MAPSAS and other lakes communities have come together to try to understand how bio-remediation technologies can be used to deal with the sewage inflow in some of the rejuvenated/to be rejuvenated lakes around Sarjapura Road. On Tuesday, 21st November, the first meeting of this project was held with the following objectives:
1) To inform people about the project and its scope
2) To identify the process of data collection and bio-remediation evaluation
3) To understand some of the methodologies that are currently working in some of the lakes
4) To identify how the recommendations will be taken forward through till implementation
The meeting included presentations from the Phytorid, SBT and DEWATS teams. A detailed account is available on http://biometrust.blogspot.in/2014/11/lake-bio-remediation-meeting.html
Update and pic: Shubha Ramachandran
Blood donation camp
Venue: Salarpuria sanctity apartments Club House, on Sarjapura Road, near Wipro office. https://goo.gl/maps/ZSRvE
Date: December 13th, Saturday 2014.
Time: 10 am – 1 pm.
Rotary Club of Bangalore Lakeside. (RCBL) in Partnership with TTK Blood bank is organizing this camp.
Author’s note: This article is co-edted by Ritesh Chitalia.