The State government is in the final stages of finalising an action plan for a World Bank project to prevent floods in the city. The project will make a whopping ₹3000 crore available for flood mitigation in the city, parts of which have been flooded over the years including in 2022. The project was first announced by former Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai in the budget he presented earlier this year.
Revenue Minister Krishna Byre Gowda held a review meeting of the project with representatives of the World Bank on Tuesday. “The World Bank is very positive about the project and we are working towards taking it off the ground at the earliest,” he said. The project will not only focus on the creation of physical assets but also takes a multi-sectoral approach to find a holistic solution to build climate change resilience in the city, including building a robust support system for decision-making, he added.
The project will focus on three broad pillars - rebuilding storm-water drains (SWDs), desilting lakes in the areas that flood and install sluice gates at these lakes to ensure they act as balancing reservoirs, and augment the Sewage Treatment Plant (STP) capacity and take the treated water out of the city water system to fill tanks in drought-hit neighbouring districts.
