All set for land acquisition for two hi-tech industrial layouts The Hindu : Karnataka News :

The Hindu : Karnataka News : All set for land acquisition for two hi-tech industrial layouts: "

Two hi-tech industrial layouts have been planned around Bangalore and they will be contiguous with the five new mega housing layouts to be formed by Bangalore Development Authority (BDA).This is said to be part of a new experiment being launched by the Government to decongest Bangalore and to ensure that people from one residential pocket are not compelled to crisscross the city to reach their workplaces.Called 'the integrated township scheme', the Government has decided to promote integrated townships like what prevailed several decades ago when major industries had a residential township alongside.Sources in the State Secretariat told The Hindu here that the Government, which sometime ago cleared the preliminary proposal and surveys for the formation of the two industrial layouts, was now expected to give the formal nod for acquisition of lands.These lands along with the 15,000 acres of land sought to be acquired by the BDA for the formation of five mega layouts were part of the greenbelt around Bangalore and were recently reclassified following the adoption of the new Comprehensive Development Plan for Bangalore.

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A heavy downpour and it floods here The Hindu : Karnataka / Bangalore News

The Hindu : Karnataka / Bangalore News : A heavy downpour and it floods here: "

Even the most seasoned commuter quails at the thought of venturing on Mysore Road after a heavy spell of rain. For, this busy arterial road gets choked at least at two points — its junction with the Outer Ring Road (ORR) near Nayandahalli and at the Rajarajeshwari arch. While the Vrishabhavathi overflows at the ORR Junction, the discharge from Nayandahalli lake submerges the road near the arch as the water does not find its way to reach the Vrishabhavathi valley.This problem manifested itself in its worst form during last week's rain. On Wednesday night, the inbound as well as outbound traffic was held up for more than three hours.Worse still, there was an encore on Friday too before the Bruhat Bangalore Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) stirred itself into action.Not that it was anything news. During the October 2005 rains, the then BBMP Commissioner K. Jairaj had promised to remove silt from the valley near the ORR Junction; remove encroachment on the 'rajakaluve' of the Nayandahalli lake and allow free flow of the lake discharge to the valley. Monsoon over, the promises remained unkept. (snip)

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The dead are dead, and we aren’t alive: Tehelka

Tehelka:: Free. Fair. Fearless: "

Nagratna cannot stop sobbing. Basavegowda, her husband, swallowed pesticide on the morning of June 2, just as the family was busy with its chores. He was rushed to KR Hospital in Mysore, where for the next 48 hours, doctors battled to save the life of a man who had lost the will to live. Owner of three acres of land at Sadholalu village, Basavegowda died with a debt of Rs 3 lakh against his name. He was unable to take any more harassment from the moneylenders he was indebted to.Only three months ago, Basavegowda had sunk a borewell with the loan, when he had not enough water for his sugarcane crop. He was one of the hundreds of farmers dependent on irrigation water from the Krishnaraja Sagar dam in Mandya district, about 100km from Bangalore. His farm was at the tail end of the dam's canals. Water to such farms is in short supply due to poorly maintained canals, pilferage by farmers and erratic power. His sugarcane crop dried up as a result.

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Choked drains, slush make it a hell The Hindu : Karnataka / Bangalore News

The Hindu : Karnataka / Bangalore News : Choked drains, slush make it a hell: "

Eleven-year-old Mageshwari, a seventh standard student of a private school in Annaiah Reddy Layout of Puttenahalli, has not been able to wear her uniform for the last three days. You ask her and she innocently says that there is no water in her house to wash the uniform.Similar is the case with other students. But thankfully their school principal has not objected because he too has the same problem.'I cannot be strict now. When there is no water to drink, where will they have water to wash,' P.V. Ravindranath, Principal of Image English School, said.The deluge clogged sanitary drains and damaged the borewell water pipelines in the area. Since the rains, residents are left without any water.'The water supply (which was already irregular in the past) has stopped since Sunday. We are either buying tanker water from other areas or using the smelly contaminated water from the private borewells in the neighbourhood. We are forced to drink this water,' said Nagaratna S., a resident.'Our toilets are blocked. The stench is unbearable. There is slush all around us. We cannot afford to buy packaged drinking water cans and are forced to manage with whatever we get,' said P. Amaiahyamma, a resident.

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Encroachment: residents of Tatanagar receive notice The Hindu : Karnataka / Bangalore News

The Hindu : Karnataka / Bangalore News : Encroachment: residents of Tatanagar receive notice: "

At least 16 residents of Tatanagar near Hebbal, a layout formed for employees of the Indian Institute of Science (IISc.), have received show-cause notices from the State Government for encroachment on a Raja Kaluve (primary drain).The layout was developed by the IISc. Employees House Building Cooperative Society, part of which has allegedly been formed on the Raja Kaluve that leads out of Kodigehalli lake.The Government has come to the conclusion that it is encroachment based on survey reports and village maps, according to an order passed by the court of the Special Deputy Commissioner on August 31.Residents, however, contest the claim that they have unauthorisedly occupied the Raja Kaluve and have obtained a stay from the Karnataka Appellate Tribunal over the Special Deputy Commissioner's order.'The land for this layout was acquired by the government on behalf of the cooperative society. The Bangalore Development Authority (BDA) released the sites in 1999. We have received approvals from all other statutory bodies,' says H.N. Vasan, Principal Research Scientist from the Solid State and Structural Chemistry Unit at the IISc. and an affected resident.

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PPP in urban infrastructure is the trickiest

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/ET_Features/The_Sunday_ET/Special_Report/PPP_in_urban_infrastructure_is_the_trickiest/articleshow/msid-2393882,curpg-1.cms
PPP in urban infrastructure is the trickiest
23 Sep, 2007, 0017 hrs IST,Vinayak Chatterjee,

Of the various components of infrastructure, PPP in urban infrastructure is clearly the trickiest. It is not a standalone lumpy investment like a power plant, port or airport. Viability is dependent on collecting user-pay charges from politically-sensitive constituents.

And it is dependent on long-term agreements and support from generally soulless urban local bodies. To add to the challenge, India has 5,545 urban agglomerations (UAs). Around 11.6% of these UAs, that have a population in excess of 1 lakh, are called ‘cities’. There are 643 cities.

Moreover, nobody quite has a fix on how much investment urban India needs. The best estimate I am aware of comes from Ramesh Ramanathan of Janaagraha, one of the finest minds our country has on urban rejuvenation issues.

He reckons that the appropriate thumb-rule is Rs 50,000 per capita of urban population. By this estimate, investments required for all our towns and cities put together is $348 billion, possibly over the next 15 years. So, a town like Dehradun (population – 5,28,000) will require Rs 2,640 crore and a city like Bangalore (population-56,87,000) will require Rs 28,435 crore till almost the first quarter of this century.

And where is all this money going to come from? Even with JNNURM (Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission) nudging urban authorities to wake up to the realities, it is unlikely that more than 30% of the capital needed will come from PPP and private sources, as against an expectation of 20% for the infrastructure sector as a whole at the national level.

(snip)

Basic amenities sought The Hindu : Karnataka / Bangalore News

The Hindu : Karnataka / Bangalore News : Basic amenities sought: "

The Karnataka State Construction Workers' Central Union, L.R. Nagar and Ambedkar Nagar branch, organised a massive protest in front of the National Games Village complex protesting against the apathy of the State Government and the Bruhat Bangalore Mahanagara Palike towards their problems. Representatives of the union and residents of the L.R. Nagar and Ambedkar Nagar slums demanded that residents be provided with basic amenities such as clean drinking water, sanitation and sewage facilities and proper garbage disposal facilities. P. Govindaraju, union president, said that the huge storm water drain running parallel to the slums was posing a major hazard for residents, especially children. As part of the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM) under which street lights, roads and basic amenities would be provided, a retaining wall should also be built around the drain to ensure safety of residents.'Every time there is heavy rain, our area gets flooded and water enters the houses. Moreover, drinking water is getting mixed with sewage and even though we have complained several times to the Bangalore Water Supply and Sewerage Board, no action has been taken,' Natarajan, a resident of Ambedkar Nagar, said. He said that despite several representations to the BBMP, no action had to taken to provide amenities to the people in these areas.

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Sunita Narain: Reinventing water-waste for Indian cities

Sunita Narain: Reinventing water-waste for Indian cities: "

India is growing rapidly in its cities. Cities require water and sanitation and while the government estimates that as much as 80 per cent of urban Indians have access to safe drinking water and 64 per cent to sanitation facilities, these numbers hide more than they tell. Shortages of drinking water cripple cities. The quality of water supplied is increasingly a problem. The fact is that the pollution of rivers and other water systems puts pressure on public water utilities to increase treatment costs. Groundwater levels are declining precipitously in urban areas as people bore deeper in search of the water that municipalities cannot supply. In all this, the waste generated by cities is not treated and adds to the burden of contamination of water bodies. Cities today have no option but to source water from further and further away. This then increases the cost of treatment and delivery of water. It also leads to inefficiencies in supply, with distribution losses estimated to be in the order of 30-50 per cent in almost all cities of the country. In other words, there is less water to supply and there is less water for which full costs have to be recovered. (snip)

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Project eases water scarcity in north Karnataka The Hindu : Karnataka / Bangalore News

The Hindu : Karnataka / Bangalore News : Project eases water scarcity in north Karnataka: "

A Rs. 929.67-crore Jal Nirmal Project has significantly improved rural communities' access to potable drinking water and sanitation services in 11 districts of north Karnataka. It has reduced, by nearly 50 per cent, waterborne diseases in select villages.The project, which was launched in April, 2002, after initial delays, has covered 3,064 habitations of 744 gram panchayats in the rain-fed and arid districts of Bidar, Gulbarga, Raichur, Bijapur, Bagalkot, Koppal, Gadag, Haveri, Belguam, Dharwad and Uttara Kannada. The International Development Association (IDA), the soft arm of the World Bank, has granted credit of Rs. 728.57 crore to the project.As many as 1,935 drinking water supply schemes and 1,069 road and drain works have been implemented by spending Rs. 587.68 crore as on June, 2007. With the execution of the schemes, the availability of drinking water in the villages has been enhanced from 30 litres per capita per day (LPCD) to 55 LPCD in the five-year period. Besides village sanitation, JNP has improved sanitation facilities in 2,000 primary and higher primary schools. (snip)

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Protest against lack of water supply The Hindu : Karnataka / Bangalore News

The Hindu : Karnataka / Bangalore News : Protest against lack of water supply: "

Residents of Bharathinagar protested in front of the Bangalore Water Supply and Sewerage Board (BWSSB) Machalibetta service station on Tuesday against the lack of water supply to their area for the past 15 days. Holding empty plastic pots as symbolic of the water scarcity they have been facing, the protestors, mostly women, demanded that water supply be restored immediately. Mallika, one of the protestors, said that they had been facing problems since last year when the public tap in their area had been removed. 'We have to walk far distances late in the night when they release water. How can we do that?' she asked. Deepa, another protestor, said that the BWSSB has been asking them to install meters to get regular water supply.'But we live in rented houses. We keep changing houses. We cannot afford to spend Rs. 2,000 or Rs. 3,000 to install meters.' Baby, who has a meter installed in her house, however, said that even with meters, she had not received water for 15 days. Rajeev K.N., Assistant Executive Engineer, said that water supply had been affected because the area is at the 'tail-end' of the Cauvery water supply system. 'But water will be supplied by evening,' he said.

(snip)"

BWSSB first water utility to go in for credit rating The Hindu : Front Page

The Hindu : Front Page : BWSSB first water utility to go in for credit rating: "

As a measure to assess its financial strength, the Bangalore Water Supply and Sewerage Board (BWSSB) has become the first water utility in the country to go in for credit rating. The Board has appointed ICRA Ltd., one of India's leading credit-rating agencies, to evaluate its financial strength in leveraging the market to raise funds. The rating will analyse the BWSSB's debt-leveraging ratio, or its borrowing capacity.Disclosing this to The Hindu, BWSSB chairperson G. Latha Krishna Rao said that this was an effort to 'find out where and how the service oriented, no loss, no profit organisation truly stands vis-À-vis other establishment s'. The rating, which should be out by November, will, according to Ms. Rao, not only allow the BWSSB to see where its finances stand, but also enable it to secure funding from the public, and financial institutions and plan its projects.'We might feel we are good, the best… but if it comes from an independent credit-rating agency, it will have that much more weight.' Ms. Rao, who has a financial background, said that the rating exercise 'will help the BWSSB to clean up its books'. It will also allow the BWSSB to 'take mid-course corrective steps if necessary'. (snip)

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The Hindu : Karnataka / Bangalore News : Repair on pipeline hits traffic

The Hindu : Karnataka / Bangalore News : Repair on pipeline hits traffic: "

It was wastage of precious water. As Bangalore Water Supply and Sewerage Board (BWSSB) struggled to plug a leaking water supply line, precious drinking water flooded the busy T. Chowdiah Road and surrounding areas on Sunday.Even as BWSSB tried to arrest the leak near Bangalore Development Authority office, water supply was affected in Sadashivnagar, Sanjay Nagar and other surrounding areas.BWSSB personnel pumped out water stocked in the cement pipeline since the supply was stopped. 'We are yet to reach the leaking point, which is 2 metres below the surface level,' a BWSSB official said. (snip)

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Deccan Herald - Thirsty Bangalore to get recycled water

Deccan Herald - Thirsty Bangalore to get recycled water: "

Bangaloreans will get to drink a mixture of recycled water and rain water in future.The Bangalore Water Supply and Sewerage Board (BWSSB), in a bid to meet the water supply-demand for the next 20 years, has decided to focus more on water-recycling technologies instead of tapping new water sources to enhance the supply of potable water.This decision has come against the backdrop of the Cauvery River Water Disputes Tribunal's verdict (which is being challenged before the Supreme Court) allotting a meagre quantity of water from the Cauvery river for Bangalore city for drinking purpose.Announcing the plan to supply 600 MLD of recycled water for potable purposes after reviewing BWSSB's projects in Bangalore on Thursday, Chief Minister H D Kumaraswamy said sewage water would treated by using ultra filtration (UF) water recycling technology to enhance supply of potable water. (snip)

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Deccan Herald - State to have policy on rain water harvesting

Deccan Herald - State to have policy on rain water harvesting: "

Water table reports in Karnataka reveal a bleak future. Rain water harvesting seems to be the only viable option, as the state government is seriously working on a policy on rain water harvesting (RWH).The RWH policy is being created to mandate rainwater harvesting for residences, commerical buildings, industrial complexes, public buildings and parks, a top official of the Urban Development department said. (snip)

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Bangalore team visits RWH structures in city, The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Chennai News

The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Chennai News : Bangalore team visits RWH structures in city: "

Bangalore is bound to go the Chennai way with regard to rainwater harvesting soon. As a precursor to making harnessing of rainwater mandatory, as in Chennai, a team of officials from Bangalore Water Supply and Sewerage Board (BWSSB) visited Chennai Metrowater's Rain Centre in Anna Nagar on Thursday to study the concept.The 30-member team, including plumbers, also toured a few other Metrowater rainwater harvesting (RWH) projects and models adopted in some houses and multi-storeyed apartments in Anna Nagar.Briefing the team, Metrowater officials said that given the average annual rainfall of about 1,200 mm in the city, an area of about 2,400 sq.ft. would receive about 2.67 lakh litres of rain water. Of this, at least 60 per cent can be recharged with proper RWH system.BWSSB chief engineer (Quality Assurance Wing) R.Vasudevan said the groundwater extraction in Bangalore was so much that the water level had dipped to about 300 feet below ground level. BWSSB supplied about 900 million litres of water a day (mld) against the demand of 1,300 mld. 'We depend on the Cauvery water drawn from 100 km away from the city. Due to this, about 75 per cent of the [BWSSB] revenue is spent on electricity charges,' he said.Therefore, it has been decided to make RWH mandatory in Bangalore to arrest groundwater depletion, he added. (snip)

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