Thwarted yet again

Just about a week ago, we had ended our annual report on a cheerful note that the BBMP had begun cleaning the lake bed. Putting to work  a soil excavator and a JCB, the contractor was making excellent progress. 

5th Jan 2021

6th Jan 2021

Everything was undone by the rain which began yesterday afternoon and lasted into the night. We anticipated the worst and, as the photographs show, were proved right. 

After the rains

Today was bright and sunny. We will now wait for more such days with not a dark cloud in the sky till BBMP completes their work once and for all. Please strengthen our hope with your good wishes!

Best regards

PNLIT team

Photos taken by Ramu, Geetha Srikrishnan and Megha Malviya

The fish kill in March 2018 and after

We used to welcome the rain but now we dread the dark clouds. The sewerage system outside the lake is a combined one and even a drizzle can cause rain water to mix with the sewage, overflow from the manhole and enter the lake. It did on 15th March and triggered the fish kill in our lake. 

Sewage entered the lake from three places in March - Nataraja Layout; 1st Cross, Aradhana Layout and from the chamber beside the wall of MLR Convention Centre. In the name of beautifying their entrance, the newly constructed Samskruthi Brindavana laid a garden and buried the manhole cover. 

Another reason for the fish to die was because the fisherman released more fingerlings into the lake on 9th Feb. even though the water level was falling fast due to evaporation. He ended up losing all of them (see pic). He does nothing to help us maintain the lake but was quick to blame us for his fish dying due to the sewage. We have updated the Fisheries Dept. and sought to know what measures they take to ensure the quality of the water in the lake to which they have given the fishing rights to a contractor.  

The rain in the evening of 2nd April once again brought sewage into lake. Yet again, we called the local office of BWSSB and early on 3rd morning, they cleared the block in the drain at Nataraja Layout with a jetting machine. However, the drain in 1st Cross, Aradhana Layout dead ends into the chamber. It does not need the rain to overflow. Hence, even after 15th March, sewage from this point has been steadily flowing into the lake. In a matter of days, it has completely undone our work of several years. 

Coracles filled with dead fish

The photo on 1st March below, shows the pristine wetland, the aquatic bio-filter zone, pinnacle of our endeavour. By 24th March, the water was dotted with dead fish and the grill packed with trash. Sewage from Aradhana Layout continues to flow and made the wetland a cesspool by 3rd April. 

Wetland, 1st March 2018

Wetland 24th March 2018

Sewage inflow from Aradhana Layout, 26th March 2018

Cesspool wetland, 3rd April 2018

There are no more fishes to die in our lake.  If sewage continues to flow in, the lake will die too. We have written to BWSSB. We'll update you on the actions they take to protect the lake, to ensure that sewage never again enters the lake. Sewage is not slow poison but a swift decimation not just of the fish but of the lake itself. 

Yet, in hope, 

Usha

Puttenahalli Lake begins to overflow!

For the first time since PNLIT took up the cause of saving Puttenahalli Lake, the water level has increased so much that it has begun to overflow into the waste weir! We can't contain our excitement. We have managed to get a once dry lake brimming with water! Yay!!!!!!!!!!!

The sight of water, water everywhere warms our hearts but it also means that we have more work in store, keeping more water clean. With the water, a lot of trash has come our way, but we have been able to trap quite a bit of it. 

See the photos. Better still, visit the lake! 

Cheers

PNLIT team

The lake after the May showers

Puttenahalli Lake (Pic: Jaba)

Panoramic view (Pic: Usha Rajagopalan)

Aerial view (Pic: Geetha Balan)

With just two showers, yesterday and the day before, the water level has increased considerably making the lake an absolutely delightful sight. More photos here

Do visit the lake, take photographs and share them with us and all. 

What a shower!

The rain yesterday took all by surprise. Not us though since we are in the habit of looking at the sky for rain bearing clouds. Nevertheless, we hoped and prayed, that the dark clouds would not glide away but show their mercy on the lake. It did and how! 

It is good news and bad news really since the rain is washing away the soil on the slope but this is a far easier problem to solve than how to prevent vandalism!

Usha

Pics: Nupur Jain

How much water entered the lake?

It rained heavily in Bangalore last night.

"How much water entered the lake last night?" This is the question we've been asked since morning. Well, this is the first thing we checked ourselves. The answer - take a look at the photos. For a comparison, we've attached an aerial view of the lake taken by Geetha Srikrishnan on 17th August 2015, after the rain the previous night. Her aerial view of the lake taken today is attached as well. Thanks to Geetha and Amod for helping us answer The Question with their photographs.

17th August 2015  (Pic: Geetha Srikrishnan)

5th September 2015 (Pic: Geetha Srikrishnan)

5th September 2015 (Pic: Amod Malviya)

It is said to have been a stormy rainy night when Sri Krishna was born and hence it invariably rains on the eve of Janmashtami. Or perhaps the downpour last night was the precursor to the North East Monsoon, well ... 

:-)

Janmashtami greetings to all from us at PNLIT.

And happy Teachers' Day to our teachers.

Best regards

Usha

The best laid plans ...

Just when we don't want a shower, it rains and how! Last week we'd requested BBMP to remove the Salvinia Molesta, growing in front of the slum side. It was prevented from spreading everywhere by the alligator weed, another invasive weed which, thankfully, spreads less profusely than the dreaded Salvinia. The contractor was supposed to begin work soon after Diwali. Yesterday at around 3 p.m., while we were inspecting the Salvinia infested area, it began to rain sending us scampering for cover to the Gazebo. We were joined by a few others and our volunteer teacher, Mr. Ramakrishna Rao shifted the class to the security cabin. His two students are preparing for the 12th board exam and cannot be disturbed on any account. 

The rain continued and our 12 foot long level marker which was a good foot or more above the water, submerged. Within an hour, the Salvinia side too went under water. Now there's just a thin strip of alligator weed acting as a barrier! Our plan to remove the Salvinia manually was well and truly scotched. Perhaps we should revise our plan and get the Salvinia weevil from Trichur! Not for nothing did poet Robert Burns say that the best laid schemes of mice and men/often go awry. 

The photos show how the water level increased after yesterday's shower, post the last major shower on 6th October.

Usha

6th Oct 2014

25th Oct 2014

6th Oct 2014

25th Oct 2014

6th Oct 2014

26th Oct 2014 (Pic: Geetha Srikrishnan)

Wishing water for the lake

Sanjay M, an earnest well wisher of PNLIT sent this in an email, in reply to the post on drip irrigation.

Sanjay M http://msanjay.in
Tue, May 6, 2014

Today's welcome showers seemed to prove the saying "God helps those who help themselves" :)

Wishing those not-too-long ago good old days of the full lake are soon back and our feathered friends get back their hangout...

"Yo bro... what's up?!" ;)

"Iske feathers mere feathers se safeed, ye kaise??!" ;)

"Don't believe what your eyes are telling you. 

All they show is limitation. Look with your understanding. 

Find out what you already know and you will see the way to fly."

~ Jonathan Livingstone Seagull (Richard Bach)

Snaps were from a nature walk in the Puttenahalli Lake this Jan...

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2014-01-25 Nature Walk - Puttenahalli Lake76 photos

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Cheers,
Sanjay

A different perspective to summer lakes

Over the last few days, the Bangalore edition of The Hindu newspaper has carried two articles on lakes, both involving our Puttenahalli Lake.

On 26th March, an article titled "Lakes turn into sewage pools" was published. In summary, it reports a complaint made by a citizen regarding the state of the lakes in Bangalore (including sewage and encroachment) despite more than Rs 200 crore of State money having being spent on them over the last six years, which has drawn the attention of the Upa Lokayukta. Many of us know that some of the rejuvenated lakes do not have caretakers and are hence falling into a state of disrepair. What bothered some of us was that the article was accompanied by an anonymous picture of a lake - our Puttenahalli Lake. (The article can be seen online here.) 

Given that the title of the article was incorrectly connected with Puttenahalli Lake, PNLIT trustees wrote to The Hindu informing it that the picture was misleading; that PNLIT is continuously monitoring the inflows and is prompt to take action to ensure that sewage does not enter the lake. 

Today, 30th March, the paper carries an article titled "Puttenahalli Lake is in better shape now". It reports PNLIT's efforts to keep sewage from entering the lake, along with a recent picture of the lake, which unfortunately, as with the first article, does not support the text. (The article can be seen online here.)

While not rushing to judge the intent of the second article, it brings our attention to two important aspects of lakes:

- challenges in lake management, including reckless acts such as burning, which we have posted about here

- life cycles of rain-fed lakes (most of Bangalore's lakes are rain-fed complex ecosystems). 

Life-cycles of rain-fed lakes

During a good monsoon, if the water from the surrounding areas is diverted to the lake, the level of water in the lake rises (June - December), as we have seen at Puttenahalli Lake this past year. With the retreat of the monsoon and the onset of summer, the water level starts dropping. In small lakes and ponds, while the deeper parts hold out, large portions dry out completely. 

Dr S. Subramanya from GKVK, while explaining the natural cycle of small lakes, had this to say about Puttenahalli Lake: 

The very fact that the water is still holding out at your lake is an indication that the ground water too is holding out. Let the water level hold on its own and let us allow the natural process to go on as it used to. Summer drying will breath a fresh life into the lake, once the pre-monsoon inflow starts. This is necessary to kill-off all the invasive plant species before the next monsoon arrives. This also gives us a chance to do the necessary repair-works in the lake-bed: get to work with spades to scrap-off those unwanted weeds, cleaning-up channels, drain pipes, etc.

While keeping this in mind, it must be said that for most people, the picture of a "lake" is one of perennial water. Along with BBMP/ BWSSB, PNLIT has been exploring the option of getting treated water (water that has been put through an STP) from nearby areas into the lake. This would ensure that a reasonable portion of the lake has water through the year. Jakkur Lake in north Bangalore is one of the successful treated-water lakes in Bangalore, and is now a potential model for Integrated Urban Water Management. (For more information, read here.) 

PNLIT is working to strike a balance. 

We hope that this information we have shared gives you a better perspective of lakes and gives you answers to the questions skeptics may pose when you talk of the "success" at Puttenahalli Lake. Dry lakes in summer should not be equated to "money down the drain".   

Seeing is believing

We are often asked why the lake is not filling up in spite of good showers. Unless you visit the lake once in a while and reassure yourself with your own little level markers, our explanations as given below may perhaps ring hollow though being true. 

* The rain in South Bangalore, especially in JP Nagar/Puttenahalli has been less compared to other parts of Bangalore. After the first showers in end May, it has been raining in our area only for the past three or four days. If it continues for the rest of the monsoon (till end Sept/Oct in Blr), the level will increase beyond any doubt.

* The diversion channel is working very well and is one of the reasons why we do have so much water in the lake. In fact, the force has been so much that the granite stones placed below the new inlet got dislodged. To break the force and to collect floating plastic, we got BBMP to build a couple of steps. 

Steps to break the force, and for a stepped waterfall! 

* This year there is a substantial inflow from South City side as well. 

* The alligator weed is growing so rampantly on the lake bed that it covers the water. We are taking steps to get the weed removed. It could prove to be costly as we intend to get it done with our funds, and not through BBMP.

Several of our regular visitors have made it a point to visit the lake just after a shower to see the water flowing into the lake. One of them, Rajesh Agrawal from Brigade Millennium took a short video last evening, that you can watch on Youtube here.

Seeing is indeed believing!

Usha

An evening of rain

Usha writes:
Just when we were getting worried about scanty rain in our area, today's shower gave us some hope of the level rising in our lake. The evening rain would have caused a great deal of inconvenience to people returning home from work but the lake filling up in the monsoon means water during the dry summer months.

Take a look at the photos Nupur and Usha took today. 

Aerial view

Water from Nataraja Layout

Water from South City

Flooded walking track 

Rain and Puttenahalli Lake

Several of the visitors to the lake, have marveled at how the level has gone up in just two or three days of pre-monsoon showers. The reason of course is that the rain has been heavy this year and more because, for the first time, some of the surface run off from the Brigade Millennium road is getting diverted into the lake through the new conduit. The story doesn't end here.

Visitors would have seen the enormous iron frame that was getting assembled on the ground between the security cabin and the gazebo. Thick iron rods have been placed over the frame to make a cow-catcher-like grill. This grill will replace the concrete slabs below the Brigade Millennium arch. Each of the slabs has two or three holes which do not permit much of the rain water to enter the trench below. Hence, rain water all these days was washing down the road like a stream. Now the grill will accept most, if not all, the surface water, and channel it into the lake. Consequently, the level at the lake will increase several times while preventing wastage of precious rain water.

Heavy duty grill

The grill is heavy duty in order to withstand the flow of traffic on this road. It is likely to be kept in place below the BM arch over the next few days. The process of digging out the slabs and replacing them with the grill will take a while and cause traffic snarls. Please bear with the inconvenience. 

Anticipating a substantial increase in the water level, we had wanted to plant a level marker but didn't get round to it, mostly because the lake bed does not have a uniform depth. The deepest place is between the island and the viewing deck. In fact, after the recent cleaning, there are pockets elsewhere which are at least 10 feet deep already. These pockets were those dug by the JCB during deweeding. The highest portion of the lake is the stretch along the coconut grove side towards the wetland.  In the two photographs below, one can see that the water is slowly inching forward, encircling the island. Use this as an indicator to see how much water has entered the lake since you last visited the lake.

Water around the island is an indicator of water rise

Evening drizzle

The drizzle this evening will increase the level by another few notches. More importantly, it will help the 300-odd shrubs planted by our volunteers over this weekend! :-)

Usha