Death by Development
In 1960, Ahmedabad had at least 204 lakes. Today, almost all have been built upon, encroached or left to disuse. The present high court order covers 137 lakes. And at least 65 of them have constructions like housing apartments or a stadium, all approved by authorities under various town planning schemes.
With rapid urbanisation, village after village around got assimilated in the city, an all too familiar story. The town planning schemes didn't take into account the natural drainage patterns and the topography of the area. This led to two things. Rainwater that earlier flowed into lakes and other low-lying areas now got impounded near new residential areas, causing seasonal flooding and waterlogging. Also, rainwater stopped reaching lakes, making them prime real estate for encroachers or builders or became garbage dumps. The new urban centres relied on piped supply of water or tubewells. The water table kept falling as paved areas prevented percolation of rainwater. Today, tubewells mining depths of 180-250 metres are quite common.
"If you superimpose the water table data on the topography, you find out where not to develop urban centres. Dense development should not be allowed in low-lying areas and these places should be kept as open spaces or green belts in town plans,' explains Nimesh Patel, architect and town developer. Mansee Bal, research assistant at the Centre For Environment Planning and Technology (CEPT), Ahmedabad, has been working since 1998 on a paper that shows how the lakes of the city can be revived and developed as open spaces. "The contour map of the region shows that the general slope in the area is very low... That means the drainage pattern of the area is highly sensitive to any human intervention,' writes Amit Kakde, engineer and who has written a research paper for CEPT entitled
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