Sewage Was Killing This 32-Acre Bengaluru Lake. Join the Residents Fighting to Save It
With World Water Day 2020 around the corner, we are happy to announce that the Lake Revivers Collective is moving to its next project - the Hadosiddapura lake located in Sarjapur, Bengaluru.
It takes extraordinary will power and a sense of social duty for a person to forget about themselves and work with a single-minded goal of bringing a change. Anand Malligavad is one such person. Almost two years ago, this Bengaluru resident decided to revive the glory of his city’s legacy – its lakes.
“Bengaluru, without its vast lakes, is like a city without a heart,” says Anand, who quit his job in 2017 and dedicated his life towards a new role – that of a lake revivor. Since then, every single day in his life is dedicated to researching, mapping, planning and gathering people to give some old withering lake a new healthy life.
Join Anand and The Better Home as part of the Lake Revivers Collective and donate now to help us breathe life back into India’s lakes.
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The Lake Revivers Collective:
On February 15, 2019, The Better India published an article about Anand’s work. That single story about that single man’s initiative, opened the floodgates of responses from across the country and the world — of people and organisations who want to join him, who want to help, and who want to learn from him.
Our own passionate interest in doing something for the environment led us to a meeting with Anand — one that led to the birth of Lake Revivers Collective. Inspired by all the amazing responses we received, we asked Anand if he would like to work with us and our readers towards achieving his goal. And without a blink of an eye, Anand said yes.
The Lake Revivers Collective is an initiative as part of which The Better India and its readers are helping Anand reach his goal of saving Bengaluru, one lake at a time.
On World Water Day 2019, we started with Gavi Kere, a 3-acre lake in Anekal Taluk of Bengaluru South. With your generous and timely support, we were able to raise Rs. 17 lakh to transform the lake. From designing, cleaning, desilting, stone pitching to overall construction, it took almost 45 days for Anand and his team to complete the work at the lake. And then began the wait for the rains. With the delayed monsoon in 2019, it took time for the lake to fill up, and it now stands with about 70% water.
With World Water Day 2020 around the corner, we are happy to announce that the Lake Revivers Collective is moving to its next project – the Hadosiddapura lake located in Sarjapur, Bengaluru.
This campaign is powered by The Better Home, India’s first subscription service for sustainable home cleaning products. The condition of our water bodies today is a direct result of our actions. The Better Home stands for the belief that we can change the fate of our lakes, one wash at a time. Check out the range of non-toxic eco-friendly cleaners from The Better Home here.
Join Anand and The Better Home as part of the Lake Revivers Collective and donate now to help us breathe life back into India’s lakes.
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What Next?
Unlike his previous projects like the Kyalasanahalli Lake and Gavi Kere, where he concentrated on reviving a series of lakes belonging to the same zone and stream to ensure each one supports the other, this lake is the complete opposite.
“Hadosiddapura lake is an independent catchment lake, which means it does not flow into any other lake directly. But, that does not mean, reviving this is an easy task. When I first came to analyse the condition of this lake, I realised that it was almost fully dried and only parts of it were filled with sewage water that comes through several sewage inlets connected to this lake,” shares Anand.
Back in 2017, Anand started his lake revival journey with Kyalasanahalli Lake, a 35-acre water body near Anekal, which was completed within a record time of just 45 days. This was followed by Vabasandra Lake near Bommasandra and Konasandra Lake, among others.
Living by his target of reviving 45 lakes by 2025, Anand took up the project of reviving Hadosiddapura lake in January 2020 and hopes to complete it before the monsoons hit by the end of May.
Although the lake is spread across 36-acres, Anand could only manage to begin the work on 29 acres as the rest of it had been encroached upon. “A major problem with such lakes is the high incident of encroachment. We are trying to find our way out of this problem and are taking every possible measure to get the land back, so that it can be transformed into a forest lining around the lake. It will take time of course, so at first we are pouring all our efforts to revive the spot we already have,” he tells TBI.
With the Phase-I of desilting already done, Anand has begun the Phase-II of cleaning and designing the lake with the help of residents and school students of Bhoomi Network, an institution that has been trying to revive the lake for the past few years.
“When Bhoomi Network got to know about the work I was doing in other lakes, they reached out to me with an offer to provide all the needed assistance. They have not only helped by volunteering but also by donating the initial amount for Phase-I.
At first, they excavated the 10-feet deep dry area and dug up the soil from it. This soil was then moved to build a walking track and a ring bund or barricade. The team then moved the existing water into this newly dug area using the natural gravity technique which ensured that the silt previously present in it settled at the bottom, while only the clean water flowed into the newly dug up region. “Following this, the lake soil and sand present on flow-path acted as a natural filtering medium to further purify the water,” he adds.
A lake which earlier had the water capacity of just about 9-12 feet can now hold water up to 12 to 18 feet.
“We have created mud bund partitions to separate the sewage treated water and rain water within the lake surface area in order to maintain the water quality. While the sewage water is used to water plants around the lake bed, the rainwater is used for cows, birds, fishes and other uses by the residents around the area. Because, with every lake revived, the impact is not just felt in the long term, but also in the common lives of people living around it,” says Anand.
It was this principle of bringing a holistic transformation that pushed Bhoomi Network to support this cause and donate a sum of Rs 30 lakh. But the overall project needs Rs. 50 lakh more. The Better Home, as part of the Lake Revivers Collective, has also extended its support to the cause and is helping Anand raise the remaining amount through a crowdfunding campaign.
Anand’s journey of transforming Bengaluru for good is a sum total of all our efforts and the help he received so far. In this line of work, every single step counts and all of us can become changemakers. If you agree and want to do your bit, click here and join.
Join Anand and The Better Home as part of the Lake Revivers Collective and donate now to help us breathe life back into India’s lakes.
Unable to view the above button? Click here
(Edited by Saiqua Sultan)
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