Better Water Management

Following the heavy floods in parts of Bengaluru last monsoon, the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) took up the task of stormwater drain (SWD) encroachment clearance drive in August, 2016. It has been a year - the drive started in all earnestness but soon got stuck, because of interventions by affected parties and courts. Of course the system was designed to aid all these interventions. To identify encroachments, BBMP used 50-year-old village maps, as there were no new authentic surveys done in last five decades.But while sanctioning the building plans near stormwater drains, BBMP never had the habit of checking…

Three communities in southeast Bengaluru - Rainbow Drive, Adarsh Palm Retreat and Renuka School adjacent to Kaikondarahalli Lake, have created individualised water management plans to solve problems like water shortage, reliance on borewells and flooding. Knowledge and understanding of their groundwater system has allowed these communities to make smarter decisions when it comes to withdrawing groundwater and making the conscious effort to recharge water back into the earth. Biome Environmental Trust, ACWADAM and Mapunity with funding from Wipro Ltd. spent three years researching the water that lies beneath the surface in a research project called Participatory Aquifer Mapping (PAQM). An…

Independence Day 2017 turned out to be a bright, sunny, yet cool, day – a typical Bengaluru day, it would appear.  Yet, that morning we woke up to a rapidly flowing river outside our house that had completely submerged the main road leading into S.T. Bed Layout, Koramangala. A few hapless souls could be seen wading against the tide in at least a foot of water. Our compound was flooded, too. And murky water had entered many houses in more low-lying parts of the neighbourhood. A walk around the area a little before noon on Tuesday revealed that some roads…