Days after heavy rains lashed parts of Karnataka leading to waterlogging and traffic snarls, the tall claims of the state government and civic body Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) were exposed as the after effects of the downpour were visible in the state capital among other areas.
The experts attributed the flooding in Bengaluru to multiple factors, including the encroachment of lakes, valleys and storm water drains (SWD) on account of unregulated expansion of the city that impedes the natural flow of water.
In last week, several localities and roads were flooded on the heavy rains exposed the civic apathy and poor quality of public infrastructure in Bengaluru.
“The city has sprawled without mining the topography.So basically, even though the city is 900 metres above sea level and raining on all sides, the rain water has created valleys and ridges,”said Raj Bhagat, senior manager, WRI India (GeoAnalytics).
“Valleys are where the water runs...basically the water eroded. Unfortunately because the city grew at a very fast pace and started expanding inside these valleys...roads were constructed and private plots were converted into built up areas. Due to this these valleys get blocked and there is no way for this water to move around,” he said.
“Roads will act as dams as we do not have enough culverts. When buildings come up, it raises the land topography and there is too much concrete construction for water to percolate inside the soil as such. So, it becomes difficult in all these aspects. If there is heavy rainfall across those valleys, then it will immediately flood,” he added.
{{/usCountry}}“Roads will act as dams as we do not have enough culverts. When buildings come up, it raises the land topography and there is too much concrete construction for water to percolate inside the soil as such. So, it becomes difficult in all these aspects. If there is heavy rainfall across those valleys, then it will immediately flood,” he added.
{{/usCountry}}Bhagat said that all master plans have their limitations when the city is growing rapidly.
Bengaluru has been at the receiving end of heavy downpour that has resulted in floods and water logging in several parts of the city, including its longest technology corridor on Outer Ring Road (ORR) and several other localities.
According to the Land Use Land Cover [LULC] dynamics paper by the Indian Institute of Science-Bengaluru, the city has shown a 1005% increase in urban built up area between 1973-2016.
“Unplanned rapid urbanisation during post 2000’s (concentrated developmental activities due to IT parks and SEZ’s development in the city) has led to drastic and unrealistic land use changes (Ramachandra et al 2012),” reads the report by scientists TV Ramachandra, Vinay S, Durga Madhab Mahapatra, Sincy Varghese and Bharath H Aithal.
“Urban land use shows that it is reaching saturation with respect to lateral development, whereas the scope of built up area development remains in vertical growth, but this will have telling influences on the city infrastructure (road, drinking water and sanitation facilities),” states the report. The report further shows that vegetation in key catchment areas has declined by 88% and water bodies have declined by 79%.
”Land use prediction using Agent Based Model showed that built up area will increase to 93.3% by 2020, almost on the verge of saturation. Number of lakes in Bengaluru has reduced by 790% from 1973 to 2016,” reads the report.
Meanwhile, Karnataka chief minister Basavaraj Bommai on Thursday visited several localities in the city to review the damages caused by rain.
He acknowledged that Bengaluru did not grow according to plan and heavy rains added to the challenges. He said that several encroachments will be cleared and new drains connecting lakes will be constructed soon.
“Demolition will continue till the last point, it will take little time but it will be continuous process. It will not stop,” he said. The chief minister added that corruption was also a reason for the problems.
“In the last 8 to 10 years Bengaluru has been completely neglected. Last 60 years, there was no problem, big drains etc... everything could have been done, there were no big challenges... but they didn’t do it. That time also money was sanctioned, spent but nothing was done and the work quality was poor. Because of poor quality, people are experiencing problems. The previous government’s neglect, poor quality of works and corruption is also a factor,” Bommai said.
The BJP has been in power in the Bengaluru city corporation since 2010.