February 6, 2026

Drain Drain Go Away

Another week of work begins, on Tuesday we headed out to where it all started; Devanahalli Lake, but this time we explored a little bit of how this lake continues to receive its water. When I first heard about the treated wastewater method of refilling the lake, I thought it would be relatively cleaner water entering the drainage canals compared to the urban runoff we are all used to seeing. A quick walk through the town of Devanahalli told a different story than I thought. We met up with Biome’s Kirti and a researcher from Hasirudalla, Nithish.
We began our work at the mouth of the channel in the wetlands of the inlet and source of Devanahalli. Because there was very little solid waste present at this section of the channel, I would’ve thought that the water quality and waste pollution would remain similar with little variance through the various positions. After all, what we heard from Biome’s Ayushi was that water pollutant quantity changed very little throughout the channel. A little walk up towards the first roadway crossing the channel said a very different story, not only did we mark a significant quantity of solid waste, we can begin to observe a major shift in the water quality. Local villagers walked past and asked us questions about who we were, “Are you guys government?” or “Where are you guys from?” and “What are you guys doing here?” But not in an interrogative manner, more so being curious of what we are doing to help.
As we continued to work upstream towards the fork of the channels, we met local school children on their off-days. They followed us through a large portion of our surveying and told us about the quality of the water that they rely on. One of the kids told me, “This water is dirty, and that building over there is used to filter the water for us.” All of this began because of me asking a simple question, “How deep do you think this is?” They all simply said that they did not know because of all the treated water and sludge, but they had to guess that it was less than half a meter deep. I stood with David and dropped a rock into the water to determine the depth. As soon as the rock hit the water, it disappeared and showed no other sign of sinking. Thick black sludge and sediment was disturbed, and up came a large volume of methane bubbles created by fermentation underneath the liquid. I thought to myself, even though this is treated sewage water, to what standard is necessary to eliminate this problem, as well as how much of residents around the channel contribute to this? We were told that a majority of the properties around the canals were encroaching on the canal and illegally built. But now I’m thinking, what can GCIL do to alleviate this?

By,
Tin