Brookefield Layout Residents

All roads and walkways experience wear-and-tear. Sometimes they're dug up and left open. At Brookefields Layout, we periodically maintain our roads. All with locally sourced funds. There's no shame, and absolutely every pride, in caring for one's own village!! @MTF_Mobility @ArvindLBJP @BrigadeGroup @NammaBengaluroo @WFRising @I_LOVE_BLR @BellandurJothge @bengawalk @Dnekundi_rising @BBMPCOMM @DULTBangalore

@bbmpcommr deccanherald.com/india/karnatak… Actual footage of the fire below (warning: can be disturbing to some.)

We went to the then @bbmpcommr (Tushar Girinath) asking him to execute the order. Tushar Girinath brazenly gave us the bizarre suggestion to file a police complaint against the EE and the AEE who failed to execute the order. That is, he refused to pull up his own staff, reportees under his hierarchy and power, and instead asked us to file police cases against his own staff. Such is our governance. No wonder our buildings burn.

Shortly before New Year's eve, a PG in Kundalahalli burned. Two horrific deaths, two individuals permanently mauled by fire. We residents had warned three years ago, during the building's construction, of the unsafe, crowded, and unapproved building. We filed a lawsuit and obtained a demolition order. Yet the demolition order was never acted upon. More in the thread below.

@earthfan96 Hence our motto: "The people are the Government"

@earthfan96 This land belongs not just to the government but to her citizens as well. When ordinary citizens claim public-service tasks for themselves, the government, too, will join in.

Update from Kundalahalli Lake ... The plastic-capture and sewage-settling tank, one of five, is complete. A large sewage-way that leads direct-to-drain defecations to the tank is complete. Next stage: the collected sewage will now be directed to an existing onshore water treatment plant. Preventing raw sewage entry to the lake. A public-private partnership. @ArvindLBJP @NammaBengaluroo @WFRising @I_LOVE_BLR @BellandurJothge @bengawalk @Dnekundi_rising @bbmpcommr

The citizen-government cooperation, salutory in any country, is particularly relevant our country, whose governing capacity is low compared to international standards. When citizens step in proactively and in a material capacity, they get empowered. Local governments get directed by those citizens who thusly engage.

@karzen_mys Lakes serve many purposes: water, fish, birds, trees. Lakeshores can also serve as a pedestrian shortcut between two populated ends. That is, the walkway serves an important environmental purpose of reducing vehicular dependency by enabling people to walk.

@BrookefieldsBLR Congratulation... 👏 Pls reduce citizen's walking path to increase the water holding capacity of lake... Lakes are for storing water.. Not for walking

At Kundalahalli Lake, we installed a plastic-capturing filter of a new design. The central mesh is of nylon rope, to avoid rusting. The filter sits in a 10'x10' receptacle to easily allow workers to clean. Its diagonal alignment maximizes capture area. The design is born of nearly a decade of wrestling with plastic trash clogging waterways. The filter will prevent downstream blockages and the resulting floods.

@juntamaxter @NammaBengaluroo The nylon rope is the same as used in the construction industry to construct safety nets to catch falling objects. As such, it can withstand loads of 1000 kg or more. It is similar to the material used to make belts that are tied to cranes to lift multi-ton objects.

@BrookefieldsBLR Again it's a wrong design and won't help much of the plastic breaks and they will definitely break. The filter should have been installed Slant so that when plastic reaches the grid it raises up and eventually over flows into ground. This doesn't won't do tht @NammaBengaluroo

@anzaan The gap is 9mm by 9mm. Any smaller and water gets choked.

@BrookefieldsBLR The gap between nets seems big to let through small trash. It would be more effective if another mesh is placed after this one with smaller gaps in nets. This let even smaller trash be caught without blocking water

@DamodaraB97993 Yes, maintenance is critical to any infrastructure, and it is baked into this one.

@BrookefieldsBLR You could have provided a baffle wall and an over flow chute. Regular maintenance is a must removing silt and trash. Good innovation.

@bykarthikreddy No, it was conceived by an engineer with inputs from villagers.

@BrookefieldsBLR Was this designed by a GBA engineer residing in your layout?

@anil_lulla It is an inlet to the lake. Originally a rain-water inlet, now a sewage+plastic inlet. What we've done is to capture the plastic and redirect the sewage-y water to a lakeshore STP. Thus, the goal is that no raw sewage enters the lake. If any sewage enters, it better be treated.

@BrookefieldsBLR Is it an inlet or outlet? Both require the mesh apart from the numerous gaps

@rednivaram Maintenance is a CRITICAL aspect of this, or any infrastructure. As for frequency, we will observe how rapidly the receptacle gets filled and then determine a schedule. Certainly before the monsoon and after every major shower. But possibly more frequent than that.

@BrookefieldsBLR Any planned frequency for checking the receptacle/cleaning, what gets caught? Unlike BBMP, expect you folks will have a working plan in place 😅

Nets at the mouth of a waterway are problematic because they can choke the waterway. That is why, here, we have given some space for the water and water-borne trash to collect (before the net), and for the trash to remain while the water continues flowing. For this to work, maintenance is critical. The collected trash needs to be removed ASAP.

@BrookefieldsBLR A similar design is used in australia, if I'm not mistaken, with the nets attached to the mouth of the outlet. Tinier holes in the nets as well.

"Educate, collect, dispose at point of origin" is a perfectly valid proposition, one that can happen parallelly. However, we cannot control all the upstream folks who dump trash into the drains. Hence this intervention, which is not mutually exclusive with "educate, collect, dispose."

@BrookefieldsBLR Most idiotic solution. You institute processes to educate, collect &: dispose plastic waste at the point of origin. Effective, economical & sustainable. NOT AT THE END. Which is a pathetic band aid. This is exactly why

The people in our village / layout throw trash on the street just as anybody else does. The key difference is that we have a daily cleaning program, so that the street and the drains regain their trash-free state nearly every day. By assiduously keeping the street clean, the people are slowly understanding that they, too, have a role in keeping the neighborhood clean, and they have started to reduce casual trash dumping. As such, the habit of public hygiene is a cultural change, and culture changes are always slow. So we do not claim our layout to be more innately sophisticated than anyone else. More organized, perhaps, but not more sophisticated.

@BrookefieldsBLR I thought very "sophisticated" people live in your layout, the ones who'll never throw trash anywhere.

@BidariSreenivas Yes, there is a gap in the bottom to account for a water layer. The gap will be partially filled with masonry that will support the frame.

@BrookefieldsBLR Is there a gap at the bottom?