There’s fresh hope for 68 lakes around the city which are presently dying because of the sewage being let into them from the areas that were once part of the eight urban local bodies but are now merged with the BBMP. The BWSSB’s Greater Bengaluru underground drainage (UGD) programme could come to their rescue. Once completed in 2012, the scheme, which is part of the Karnataka Municipal Reforms Project (KMRP), will make sure that the around 400 million litres of sewage from these areas that is let into the city’s natural valleys at Koramangala and Chalaghatta, Hebbal and Vrishbhavathi, is diverted to treatment plants and not find its way to lakes eventually, as it does today.

“All the new areas generate over 400 MLD sewage every day which flows into open drains leading to lakes. At least 68 lakes are polluted as a result. Once the UGD project is completed, the areas will have a sewarage network in place and no more sewage will flow into the Koramangala and Chalaghatta, Hebbal and Vrushabhavathi valleys. This way all the lakes around the eight former urban local bodies of Byatarayanapura, Bommanahalli, Dasarahalli, Kengeri, K.R.Puram, Mahadevapura, Rajarajeshwarinagara and Yelahanka will be saved,” explains a senior BWSSB officer.

The plan is to lay a sewerage network of lateral UGDs over 2,007 kms and main and sub-main UGDs over 300 kms under the Rs 1,300 crore project in the new areas. The BWSSB, currently on a mission to ensure zero inflow of sewage into Hebbal and Ulsoor lakes, is hopeful that the UGD network in these localities will help it save many more.

The project has received financial assistance from the World Bank and from the Union and state governments under the JNNURM scheme. Tenders were floated in January 2009 and the work was awarded in 2010.