The 10-lane Bengaluru-Mysuru expressway, the much vaunted economic corridor being promoted by Union Road Transport and Highways Minister Nitin Gadkari, is due to open this October. Promising a travel time of a mere 90 minutes compared to the three hours it takes to traverse 117 kms, the project is being executed at a cost of Rs 4,396 crore. Several parts of this stretch along with existing highway, which will function as service road later, is now inundated with water owing to several days of rains. This led to lakes adjacent to the under-construction highway to fill and the excess water spilled onto the busy highway leaving many vehicles stranded. Ramanagara has borne the brunt of rains and several areas have been flooded in the district.
Additional Deputy Commissioner of the Ramanagara district, Javare Gowda T said, “In Channapatna, the lakes were already full, even before monsoon because of lift irrigation. The duration of summer was also very short and it has been raining every few weeks, that’s why when it rained, the lakes overflowed very quickly. Furthermore, some of the underpasses, such as the one near Wonderla amusement park, of the Bengaluru-Mysuru highway are still under construction and it has obstructed the natural flow of water which also led to the flooding.” He further added that the flooding in Ramanagara district had caused the death of two locals and nearly 2,000 people had sought refuge in relief camps set up in the district.
However, activists do not believe that the flooding of the highway was simply because of natural forces. Lake activist Ramprasad V, said that the flooding could have been completely avoided if the authorities responsible for the construction of the highway had a better design and plan. “The road is cut across many lakes and at some places, it is right at the outlet weir. Hydraulic designing (of drainage structures such as bridges and culverts) of roads is absent as well, but this is common for all roads across Bengaluru. This highway is an engineering failure, and the floods seen recently are a man-made calamity as this could have been avoided if the design was well thought out. Meanwhile, the authorities are not taking responsibility for their poor execution and rather putting the blame on climate change,” he said.
According to Ramprasad, there are more than 35 lakes that lie along the Bengaluru-Mysuru highway and a section of the highway is built upon a waste weir without considering how the water will pass from one side of the road to the other. Waste weir or an overflow weir is a canal built so that whenever a lake becomes full, the excess water can be drained and has a passage to pass through.
Raj Bhagat Palanichamy, a GeoAnalytics expert at WRI India, took to Twitter to explain how a valley system existed near an exit near Wonderla exit on the Bengaluru-Mysuru highway. WRI India, associated with World Resources Institute, is an organisation that works on environmentally sound and socially equitable development. In this thread, he goes on to explain how the valley system also had a few irrigation tanks and rapid construction in the region led to the valley system being completely obstructed. With the flow being obstructed, the water had no other way to go, other than collecting on roads.
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— Raj Bhagat P #Mapper4Life (@rajbhagatt) August 27, 2022
Near wonderla exit in #Bengaluru - Mysuru road, there existed a valley system (flow directions indicated below). Few irrigation tanks were also there in the valley (marked in blue).
1/n pic.twitter.com/eWK2YuHZIe
The Superintendent of Police for Ramanagara district, K Santosh Babu, said that the flooding at the Bengaluru Mysuru Highway and Ramanagara district has affected more than 500 homes. Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai visited the flood affected areas of Ramanagara district on August 29, accompanied by Ministers R Ashok and CN Ashwathnarayan as well as former Chief Minister HD Kumaraswamy and his wife Anitha, who is MLA of Ramanagara. The CM visited farmers in Ramanagara and assured them of an immediate compensation of Rs 1 lakh and a total of Rs 5 lakh later for the families of those, whose houses had collapsed entirely.