Bengaluru floods: Anatomy of a drainage system gone horribly wrong By Rasheed Kappan 13 Sep, 2022 https://www.newslaundry.com/2022/09/13/bengaluru-floods-anatomy-of-a-drainage-system-gone-horribly-wrong The city is woefully ill-prepared, despite thousands of crores spent and warnings that went unheeded.. thousands living on the periphery of the Bellandur-Varthur lakes in east Bengaluru are still gripped by fear, worried that deliberately narrowed drains, encroachment of wetlands, and state apathy could trigger another round of devastation.
As rains pounded Marathahalli area barely a km away from the HAL Airport, the drain – or rajakaluve, a channel that connects water bodies – taking excess water from the upstream Doddanekundi lake to Bellandur and Varthur overflowed....“The rajakaluve here is 40 feet wide but, about 500 metres from here, has been narrowed down to just 10 feet by a big builder,” said Jagadish Reddy, who has lived in Marathahalli for decades. “They laid a slab over it for a road to their complex. We had complained several times and asked them to at least clear the silt under it, but they did not care even for the MLA.”
In its 2021 report, the Comptroller and Auditor General had pulled up the SWD department for serious lapses in stormwater management. There was not even a manual to standardise and specify drain design, construction and maintenance. The department did not factor in design tweaks and other strategies to address high-intensity rainfall, and the report also flagged lack of proper drain linkages and groundwater recharge structures.