Yele Mallappa Shetty Lake is one of the largest lakes in

Bangalore Bengaluru, also known as Bangalore (List of renamed places in India#Karnataka, its official name until 1 November 2014), is the Capital city, capital and largest city of the southern States and union territories of India, Indian state of Kar ...

, located on the eastern side of the city, outside of

Krishnarajapura Krishnarajapuram (also spelled Krishnarajapura and often abbreviated as KR Puram or KR Pura) is an eastern suburb of Bangalore, the capital of the Indian state of Karnataka. It is one of the zones of BBMP. It is from Bangalore City railway ...

. 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 Betel (''Piper betle'') is a species of flowering plant in the pepper family Piperaceae, native to Southeast Asia. It is an evergreen, dioecious vine, with glossy heart-shaped leaves and white catkins. Betel plants are cultivated for their leav ...

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

Bengaluru Bengaluru, also known as Bangalore (List of renamed places in India#Karnataka, its official name until 1 November 2014), is the Capital city, capital and largest city of the southern States and union territories of India, Indian state of Kar ...

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 of sewage water per day (MLD) generated at

, Hoodi,

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 Krishnarajapura Railway Statio ...

, 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 approxima ...

supplies treated sewage to neighboring regions such as

Chikkaballapur Chikkaballapur or Chikkaballāpura is the district headquarters of the newly created Chikkaballapur district in the state of Karnataka, India, which was carved out from Kolar district. It is located within 3 km of Muddenahalli (the birthpla ...

Kolar Kolar may refer to: Places India * Kolar, Karnataka, a city in India **Kolar Assembly constituency *Kolar district, in Karnataka, India *Kolar Gold Fields, former gold mines in Karnataka, India **KGF (disambiguation) **Kolar Gold Field Assembly co ...

and

Anekal Anekal (ಆನೇಕಲ್) is a major town and taluk of Bengaluru Urban district, part of the Bangalore Metropolitan Region. It is a major town in the suburbs of Bangalore, Bengaluru. The Chandapura-Anekal stretch is an emerging residential hu ...

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 volume resistivity or specific electrical resistance) is a fundamental specific property of a material that measures its electrical resistance or how strongly it resists electric current. A low resistivity in ...

(EC): Higher side; indicating higher levels of

alkalinity Alkalinity (from ) is the capacity of water to resist Freshwater acidification, acidification. It should not be confused with base (chemistry), basicity, which is an absolute measurement on the pH scale. Alkalinity is the strength of a buffer s ...

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 can ...

(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, wh ...

(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 plastic deformation, such as an indentation (over an area) or a scratch (linear), induced mechanically either by Pressing (metalworking), pressing or abrasion ...

: Very high *

Alkalinity Alkalinity (from ) is the capacity of water to resist Freshwater acidification, acidification. It should not be confused with base (chemistry), basicity, which is an absolute measurement on the pH scale. Alkalinity is the strength of a buffer s ...

: Higher side *

Sodium Sodium is a chemical element; it has Symbol (chemistry), symbol Na (from Neo-Latin ) and atomic number 11. It is a soft, silvery-white, highly reactive metal. Sodium is an alkali metal, being in group 1 element, group 1 of the peri ...

: Concentration of sodium was found to be lower *

Potassium Potassium is a chemical element; it has Symbol (chemistry), symbol K (from Neo-Latin ) and atomic number19. It is a silvery white metal that is soft enough to easily cut with a knife. Potassium metal reacts rapidly with atmospheric oxygen to ...

: The concentration of potassium was high *

Phosphate Phosphates are the naturally occurring form of the element phosphorus. 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 orthop ...

: 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 with the chemical formula . salt (chemistry), Salts containing this ion are called nitrates. Nitrates are common components of fertilizers and explosives. Almost all inorganic nitrates are solubility, soluble in wa ...

: 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 ...

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 throughout the Palearctic and across most of North America, and winters in southe ...

, Asian green bee-eater,

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, tropic ...

, pied kingfisher,

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 build ...

, 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 cyanobacteria. It is often found in freshwater environments. Its name refers to the oscillating motion of its filaments as they slide against each other to position the colony to face a light source. ...

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 species, invasive outside its native rang ...

were found dominant in a 2015 study.

References

External links

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