Yele Mallappa Shetty Lake is one of the largest lakes in

Bangalore Bangalore (), officially Bengaluru (), is the capital and largest city of the Indian state of Karnataka. It has a population of more than and a metropolitan population of around , making it the third most populous city and fifth most ...

, located on the eastern side of the city, outside of KR Puram. It is an artificial water reservoir constructed in early 1900s. The lake is spread over .

Geography

The lake is located in North-East Bangalore, near Whitefield. The 260 acre Yele Mallappa Shetty lake is one of the largest lakes in Bangalore. The lake has the Old Madras Road passing through it.

History

Yele Mallappa Shetty Lake derives its name from a leading philanthropist of 1900s by the name of Yele Mallappa Shetty. In the late 19th century when the city was suffering from a great drought, Yele Mallappa Shetty, a

betel leaf The betel (''Piper betle'') is a vine of the family Piperaceae, which includes pepper and kava. The betel plant is native to Southeast Asia. It is an evergreen, dioecious perennial, with glossy heart-shaped leaves and white catkins. Betel plant ...

merchant, generously donated a large part of his wealth to the construction of a tank to harvest rainwater and provide respite to the people. Due to rapid growth of

urban area, Yele Mallappa Shetty Lake has been getting encroached over the time. The multi-storey apartments in its watershed region, which are constantly feeding stormwater drains completely but are also letting untreated sewage directly into it. Even industries from surrounding areas started dumping their waste into the lake. In December 2017 a sewage treatment plant at Seegehalli was inaugurated to help treat 15 million litres of sewage water per day (MLD) generated at KR Puram,

Hoodi Hoodi, once a village, is now an expanding district in Bangalore, India. It is around east of the Kempegowda Bus stand and from International Tech Park, the information technology hub of Bangalore. It is on the Whitefield - International T ...

Mahadevapura Mahadevapura is a suburb and one of the zones of BBMP in Bangalore Urban district in the Indian state of Karnataka. It was a city municipal council. It is well connected with Outer Ring Road, Whitefield Road and Krishnarajapuram Railway Station ...

, Bhattarahalli, Devasandra, Sadaramangala and Medhalli. Currently, the

Bangalore Water Supply and Sewerage Board The Bangalore Water Supply and Sewerage Board (BWSSB) is the premier governmental agency responsible for sewage disposal and water supply to the Indian city of Bangalore. It was formed in 1964. Water supply BWSSB currently supplies approximately ...

supplies treated sewage to neighboring regions such as

Chikkaballapur Chikkaballapur is the district headquarters of the newly created Chikkaballapur district in the state of Karnataka, India, which is carved out from Kolar district. It is located within 3 km of Muddenahalli (the birthplace of eminent engine ...

Kolar Kolar or Kolara is a city in the Indian state of Karnataka. It is the headquarters of Kolar district. The city is known for its milk production and gold mines. It is also known for Someshwara temple and Kolaramma temple. History The Weste ...

and

Anekal Anekal is a major town and taluk of Bengaluru Urban district. It is a major town in the suburbs of Bengaluru city. Approximately 36 km from Bengaluru Centre and around 15 km from Hosur and Electronic City. Express lines run from Si ...

for irrigation purpose.

Water quality

In 2015 a study on water quality at the lake was conducted. With regard to the lakes physico-chemical characteristics, observations were made three times in a year representing three different seasons. The samples were collected from three different places of the lake. Following are the observations from the report: *Physico-chemical analysis: Lake water contains different types of floating, dissolved, suspended and microbiological as well as bacteriological impurities * Temperature: Neither too high nor too low * pH: Normal range *

Electrical Conductivity Electrical resistivity (also called specific electrical resistance or volume resistivity) is a fundamental property of a material that measures how strongly it resists electric current. A low resistivity indicates a material that readily allow ...

(EC): Higher side; indicating higher levels of

alkalinity Alkalinity (from ar, القلوي, al-qaly, lit=ashes of the saltwort) is the capacity of water to resist acidification. It should not be confused with basicity, which is an absolute measurement on the pH scale. Alkalinity is the strength of ...

Dissolved oxygen Oxygen saturation (symbol SO2) is a relative measure of the concentration of oxygen that is dissolved or carried in a given medium as a proportion of the maximal concentration that can be dissolved in that medium at the given temperature. It ca ...

(DO): Lower than the standard * Bio-chemical Oxygen Demand (BOD): Moderate *

Chemical oxygen demand In environmental chemistry, the chemical oxygen demand (COD) is an indicative measure of the amount of oxygen that can be consumed by reactions in a measured solution. It is commonly expressed in mass of oxygen consumed over volume of solution whic ...

(COD): Exceeded the limit in most of the samples. It clearly indicates the presence of high levels of dissolved contaminants *

Hardness In materials science, hardness (antonym: softness) is a measure of the resistance to localized plastic deformation induced by either mechanical indentation or abrasion. In general, different materials differ in their hardness; for example hard ...

: Very high *

Alkalinity Alkalinity (from ar, القلوي, al-qaly, lit=ashes of the saltwort) is the capacity of water to resist acidification. It should not be confused with basicity, which is an absolute measurement on the pH scale. Alkalinity is the strength of ...

: Higher side *

Sodium Sodium is a chemical element with the symbol Na (from Latin ''natrium'') and atomic number 11. It is a soft, silvery-white, highly reactive metal. Sodium is an alkali metal, being in group 1 of the periodic table. Its only stable iso ...

: Concentration of sodium was found to be lower *

Potassium Potassium is the chemical element with the symbol K (from Neo-Latin ''kalium'') and atomic number19. Potassium is a silvery-white metal that is soft enough to be cut with a knife with little force. Potassium metal reacts rapidly with atmosphe ...

: The concentration of potassium was high *

Phosphate In chemistry, a phosphate is an anion, salt, functional group or ester derived from a phosphoric acid. It most commonly means orthophosphate, a derivative of orthophosphoric acid . The phosphate or orthophosphate ion is derived from phospho ...

: Comparatively high amount of phosphate was recorded due to the discharge of municipality sewage and dumping of domestic waste into the lakes *

Nitrate Nitrate is a polyatomic ion A polyatomic ion, also known as a molecular ion, is a covalent bonded set of two or more atoms, or of a metal complex, that can be considered to behave as a single unit and that has a net charge that is not zer ...

: Relatively larger amount of nitrate was found

Flora and fauna

The lake is a biological hotspot for migratory birds, some of the usually spotted birds are

golden oriole The Eurasian golden oriole (''Oriolus oriolus'') also called the common golden oriole, is the only member of the Old World oriole family of passerine birds breeding in Northern Hemisphere temperate regions. It is a summer migrant in Europe and P ...

northern shoveler The northern shoveler (; ''Spatula clypeata''), known simply in Britain as the shoveler, is a common and widespread duck. It breeds in northern areas of Europe and across the Palearctic and across most of North America, wintering in southern Euro ...

Asian green bee-eater The Asian green bee-eater (''Merops orientalis''), also known as little green bee-eater, and green bee-eater in Sri Lanka, is a near passerine bird in the bee-eater family. It is resident but prone to seasonal movements and is found widely distri ...

bulbul The bulbuls are members of a family, Pycnonotidae, of medium-sized passerine songbirds, which also includes greenbuls, brownbuls, leafloves, and bristlebills. The family is distributed across most of Africa and into the Middle East, tropical As ...

pied kingfisher The pied kingfisher (''Ceryle rudis'') is a species of water kingfisher widely distributed across Africa and Asia. Originally described by Carl Linnaeus in 1758, it has five recognised subspecies. Its black and white plumage and crest, as well a ...

egrets Egrets ( ) are herons, generally long-legged wading birds, that have white or buff plumage, developing fine plumes (usually milky white) during the breeding season. Egrets are not a biologically distinct group from herons and have the same buil ...

, and

Eurasian coot The Eurasian coot (''Fulica atra''), also known as the common coot, or Australian coot, is a member of the rail and crake bird family, the Rallidae. It is found in Europe, Asia, Australia, New Zealand and parts of North Africa. It has a slaty-bla ...

. A species from the genus

Oscillatoria ''Oscillatoria'' is a genus of filamentous cyanobacterium which is often found in freshwater environments, such as hot springs, and appears blue-green. Its name refers to the oscillating motion of its filaments as they slide against each other ...

and

water hyacinth ''Pontederia crassipes'' (formerly ''Eichhornia crassipes''), commonly known as common water hyacinth is an aquatic plant native to South America, naturalized throughout the world, and often invasive outside its native range.

References

;Citations

External links

{{Hydrology of Karnataka, state=expanded Reservoirs in Karnataka Lakes of Bangalore Bird sanctuaries of Karnataka