Reclaiming Water Bodies for Urban Land Use: Environmental Implications

Filling, Draining, or Building Over

Reclamation is the filling, draining or building over of a water body. A lake, pond or wetland loses its floor, its water and its function, and turns into solid, usable land. Urban lakes, village ponds and temple tanks are frequent targets. So are wetlands, marshes, floodplains, drains, riverbeds and coastal lagoons. Small, seasonal water bodies in cities tend to vanish first, because nobody notices they’re gone.

Here’s why it keeps happening, in the order it usually unfolds. Growing cities need land for housing, roads and commercial projects, and a “vacant” water body looks like the easiest place to find it. Planners and builders often treat a lake or wetland as unused wasteland, not as land that is already doing a job.

Garbage dumped into a water body over years gradually raises its floor until it turns into solid ground. Where rules aren’t policed, builders fill water with debris and construct anyway. Occupation usually starts small and informal, then hardens into something permanent nobody wants to remove.

Five Jobs a Lake Does For Free

A healthy lake or wetland is doing several jobs at once, quietly, for free. Fill it in, and every one of those jobs stops at the same time. Lakes and wetlands store rainwater and river overflow. Remove that storage, and storm water has nowhere to go but streets and drains, which is exactly why Chennai and Bengaluru flood so badly after heavy rain.

Water from a wetland slowly seeps down and refills the aquifers below it, which then feed wells and borewells. A filled water body stops this recharge completely, pushing cities toward distant or deeper water sources.

Fish, birds, amphibians and aquatic plants live in and around water bodies, and migratory birds use wetlands as seasonal rest stops. Reclamation destroys these habitats permanently, and species that can’t move elsewhere are simply lost. Open water also cools the air around it through evaporation, and wetland plants trap dust and pollutants. A filled site becomes a heat island that stays hot even at night, because that natural cooling system is gone.

Fisherfolk, washerfolk and lotus growers depend directly on water bodies, and wetlands also treat wastewater and purify it naturally. Reclaimed land stops providing any of these free services, and the income, food and water security built around it disappears with it.

A Wetland That Still Works, and One That’s Caught Fire

These three cities show the whole spectrum, from a wetland that still works to one that’s caught fire. The East Kolkata Wetlands are a network of ponds called bheris that treat Kolkata’s sewage by recycling it into fish food. Listed as a Ramsar site in 2002, it’s still shrinking at the edges from urban expansion and dumping.

Bellandur Lake, Bengaluru’s largest lake, is now overloaded with sewage, runoff and garbage. Its waters froth and have caught fire more than once, and the National Green Tribunal has ordered its restoration. Pallikaranai Marsh, a freshwater marsh on Chennai’s southern edge, absorbs floodwater and shelters rare bird species. It became a Ramsar site in 2022, but encroachment and waste dumping still threaten it.

Four Pieces of the Legal Net

India does have a legal net for this, built from a few key pieces. The Wetlands (Conservation and Management) Rules, 2017, are the main rulebook protecting wetlands from reclamation, sitting under the Environment Protection Act, 1986, the parent law they’re framed under. The Ramsar Convention, 1971, is the international treaty that lists wetlands of global importance.

Restoration means cleaning, de-encroaching and reviving a water body that’s already been damaged. Cities are mapping and geotagging their water bodies so they can’t quietly disappear, and healthy wetlands are increasingly being written into city master plans. The cheaper move is always protection: guarding a lake costs far less than restoring one after the fact.

A Court Built Specifically for Environmental Cases

The National Green Tribunal is the court that hears water-body cases, including Bellandur’s. It was set up by the Government of India in 2010, to ensure the swift disposal of environmental cases rather than letting them queue up in ordinary courts. The National Green Tribunal Act, 2010, is closely linked to the right to a healthy environment, read as part of the Right to Life under Article 21.

The NGT’s Principal Bench sits in Delhi, though it also has regional benches elsewhere in the country.