Karnataka’s ₹391 crore plan to dump pollution from Bengaluru on farmers in Kanakapura

Karnataka's ₹391 crore Byramangala reservoir revival plan fails to address the root causes of Vrishabhavati river pollution, reports Mapping Malnad.

A recently released report alleges that the Karnataka government’s proposal of a ₹391 crore plan to revive the long-contaminated Byramangala reservoir reveals a fundamental disconnect from pollution reality, and fails to address the source of the pollution that has turned into a Vrishabhavati river toxic stream. 

Published by Mapping Malnad, a citizen-led platform for research, advocacy and dialogue to protect the Western Ghats, the report throws light on the river’s worsening condition, and how the river’s pollutants also make their way into vegetables, feed, and even animal and human bodies, turning it into a public health crisis. 

The Vrishabhavathi today is not a river in the conventional sense — it is an urban channel of waste and wastewater,” states the report.

According to the researchers, the approximately 69 km-long river collects nearly 500 MLD of toxic wastewater along with massive quantities of solid waste from urban, industrial, and rural settlements before being impounded behind the Byramangala dam near Bidadi.  

In 2019, the government of Karnataka began efforts to execute a ₹110-crore project to construct a diversion weir and channel to direct water from Vrishabhavati to Arkavati river without entering the Byramangala reservoir. 

Byramangala reservoir reduces the pollution load of the Vrishabhavati by naturally filtering several pollutants. The government’s diversion project would have eliminated this step. The diversion project was being pushed even as the recommendations of a 2018 CPCB report and a 2019 KSPCB Action Plan to address the root cause of the problem remained largely unimplemented.