Property Plus
Bangalore
Chennai
Hyderabad
Kochi
Thiruvananthapuram
WATER WISE
Once a beautiful lake, now a cesspool
S. VISHWANATH
|
Release of raw sewage and a hydro-electric plant are destroying a source of drinking water
|
Loktak is the name of a beautiful lake and wetland, about 40 km from Imphal city, the capital of Manipur. For centuries, people around the lake used to take drinking water from it, fish in its waters and cultivate paddy around its shores. Things have rapidly and dramatically changed since 1984. Loktak is dying.
If quick action is not resorted to, the livelihood of thousands of fishermen and paddy cultivators will disappear. Many species of plants and the Sangka, a small deer found only here, will also go. With it will disappear an ecosystem and a unique way of life. This is a tale essentially of an hydro-electric plant generating electricity for urban consumption and a city not treating its waste but letting it into the lake to kill it.
Recognised by the Ramsar Convention as a wetland ecosystem, the Loktak Lake ebbs and swells with the seasons. Fish would migrate in to spawn from as far as the Bay of Bengal. Fishermen would have plenty of fish to catch near the shore and the paddy growers would take a crop out in their fields when the lake water ebbed in a particular time of the year.
The setting up of a hydro-electric project to generate 105 MW of electricity was the first step in the change in the ecosystem.
The culprit
The project necessitated the setting up of a barrage on the Ithai River leading out the lake waters. This barrage was meant to hold more water in Loktak. However, one of the unintended effects was to keep the lake almost permanently full, submerging paddy fields throughout the year and rendering them unfit for cultivation. Fishermen also saw a reduction in fish due to the barrage stopping spawning by fish swimming upstream. The fishermen moved into the lake for their activities, placing rings of nets with weeds in the lake itself, further damaging the ecosystem. Water chestnuts growing abundantly have more or less disappeared.
In the meantime sewage from Imphal started flowing into Loktak from Nabul River passing through the city. Nutrient levels increased and ‘phumdis’ wild grass and weeds started to proliferate on the surface as a floating mat. As a friend exclaimed when we went to see Loktak together, “I used to see only water. Now I see only phumdis and no water”.
Urban impacts
Urban lakes and tanks have disappeared at an alarming rate in many cities of India. The remaining stand polluted. Only a few have not succumbed to urban pressures. Now the ecological footprint of urban consumption and waste generation is devastating rivers, lakes, wetlands and water bodies far away from city centres. Loktak is 40 kilometres from Imphal, yet the stranglehold of Imphal squeezes the life out of it.
Natural disaster: A lake with clean water (left) has turned into a mass of vegetation (right) because of pollution and neglect
Unless cities clean up their act, this impact will continue. Cities must release water back into the ecosystem at the same quality at which they appropriated it. Imphal releases raw sewage into the Loktak. Citizens of Imphal struggle to get water in their homes and have to buy water from private tankers. They pay very little to the institutions which supply water through the taps. Our water supply and sewage management institutions need to recover full charge for the supply of water and for its treatment. If they do not, lakes like Loktak are doomed.
Whenever we occupy properties it is for each one of us to ask what is being done about sustainable provision of water and safe disposal of sewage after treatment.
Citizens’ actions
As citizens we each must be aware of our individual actions impacting the environment. Each flush of the toilet and each switching on of a television set have an impact on water bodies. Every small action counts but unless we demand from our institutions accountability in performance we will continue to suffer consequences which will be negative.
In Loktak things are changing. The Chief Minister of Manipur is taking interest in the revival programme and a large initiative is coming from the Planning Commission. Citizens are becoming active and the Loktak Development Authority has been created.
The institution is identifying key short- term and long-term actions necessary to save the lake and is bringing together all stakeholders. A sewage collection and treatment system progresses with French funding. Hopefully, quick action on these fronts will save the lake.
www.arghyam.org
www.rainwaterclub.org
Printer friendly
page
Send this article to Friends by
E-Mail
Property Plus
Bangalore
Chennai
Hyderabad
Kochi
Thiruvananthapuram
|
