Hyderabad: Once called the city of lakes, most water bodies in Hyderabad have died a slow death. Many of them have totally vanished while some have shrunk drastically due to large-scale encroachments; what is left is polluted with illegal dumping of sewage.
A majority of the 200 lakes that existed in the limits of Greater Hyderabad have gone missing, thanks to real estate development and poor monitoring by government agencies. The impact has been manifold; aquatic life has deteriorated, groundwater levels have declined, water logging and flash floods have become more common.
However, the state government has finally woken up and decided to form a lake protection committee comprising officials from the Irrigation Department, Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC), Hyderabad Metropolitan Development Authority (HMDA) and Revenue officials. The government has asked to mark full tank levels of the lakes and fence them to stop further encroachments. Poor performance of the Lake Protection Committee authorities have resulted in only 53 lakes and Kuntas of the more than 3,500 in HMDA jurisdiction being fenced.
In order to minimise damage, the government has asked all city departments to protect lakes in their respective jurisdictions, by marking FTL levels, and fence them to prevent encroachments. The government has also decided to restore lakes under the urban Mission Kakatiya by developing a lake in each constituency. However, due to official apathy, the proposals have remained on paper.
When queried about the issue, GHMC chief engineer K. Suresh Kumar said that the corporation has already marked FTL levels for 185 lakes and fenced 53, and that it was unable to remove encroachments as several persons have been holding pattas, registration certificates and several others permission owning responsibility in the FTL levels of the lakes.
Interestingly, 3,132 lakes and kuntas in the HMDA jurisdiction are still in the proposal stage. J. Krishna Rao, executive engineer for lakes and parks said that the authority had issued a preliminary notification to fence 1,512 lakes after demarcation and final notifications were given to 152 lakes. He said that not even a single lake in HMDA jurisdiction has been fenced to protect them from further encroachments.
A study has also revealed that the combined water spread under the basins of three lakes which served as major watersheds for Hyderabad City and surrounding areas, has declined by 40 per cent between 1978 and 2013.
