We have been witnessing the same level of inefficiency and callous attitude by the regulatory agencies for the past 10 years. Friday’s fire was a result of that.
Over 460 million litres of untreated sewage enters the lake along with the unabated dumping of solid waste. This has led to the enrichment of the nutrients and generation of methane, which is highly combustible. Someone might have lit the fire, which got aggravated due to the presence of methane and dry materials.
The pontificating attitude of the regulatory agencies, which was clearly exhibited when they blamed the grass cutters for lighting the fire, shows their inefficiency.
The government has sat on the expert committee’s recommendations and came up with bizarre solutions to control the menace, one of which was to concretize the Storm Water Drains (SWD) and putting up a waste weir at the lakes which would not even stop frothing.
The expert committee had listed all the short term and long term solutions but none has been taken into knowledge. The concretization of the SWD has led to the immense flooding of the city and on top of that the width of the SWD at the Agara- Bellandur has been reduced. The biggest job of the KSPCB is to implement Water and Air act, which has never been done.
Desilting would decontaminate the lake and the treatment of sewage before it enters the lake would solve the major problem. The diversion of sewage from upstream to downstream regions should also be stopped.
Even if now the regulatory agencies wake up to the reality the situation could be brought under control but the question is- When did they start??,
