Lake development policy ready

Lake development policy ready

Special Correspondent

The focus is on the water bodies in and around Bangalore city

Lake Development Authority to be wound up

There are 278 big tanks in Bangalore and surrounding areas

BANGALORE: The State Government has prepared a comprehensive policy on development of lakes and tanks in the State, with special focus on Bangalore.

Minister for Excise and Bangalore Water Supply and Sewerage Board (BWSSB) Katta Subramanya Naidu told presspersons here on Monday that development and maintenance of all lakes, tanks and bunds in Bangalore would be vested in BWSSB as provided under the BWSSB Act.

The Lake Development Authority set up by the previous government was likely to be wound up as it was constituted through a government notification without any legal status.

He said that Bangalore and surrounding areas coming under the jurisdiction of Bruhat Bangalore Mahanagara Palike (BBMP), Bangalore Development Authority (BDA) and Bangalore Metropolitan Region Development Authority (BMRDA) had a total of 278 big tanks. Each tank had a catchment area of more than 40 hectares. The total catchment area was 14,271 hectares, Mr. Naidu pointed out.

Bangalore and suburban areas had another 1,406 smaller tanks with catchment area of less than 40 hectares each and the total area under them was 6,625 hectares.

Besides, the State Forest Department had another 114 tanks with a total area of 1,584.24 hectares, he said.

However, the Government did not have correct information about the extent of encroachment of these water bodies and had directed the Revenue and Minor Irrigation departments to identify and verify the encroachments and submit a report to the Government in a month, he said.

As many as 18 big lakes in the city would be taken up for development and desilting by the BWSSB.

Tenders would be invited to award the works after examining the detailed project reports (DPRs), he said. The BBMP and BDA would take up another 29 tanks for development.

As the BWSSB had implemented several projects without approval of the Government, a probe would be ordered into all works taken up in the past five years. The agency that would conduct the probe would be finalised after consultation with the Law Department, he said.

To address the grievances of residents at the ward-level, BWSSB engineers had been instructed to hold meetings with residents between 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. five days in a week. The interaction programmes would begin from Wednesday.