Why Hyderabad should save its Hussain Sagar Lake

By TS Sudhir Let’s begin with a statutory warning. Visiting the Hussain Sagar Lake in Hyderabad after the Ganesh immersion on 29 September could be injurious to your eyes, particularly if you are concerned about the state of India’s water bodies. As luck would have it, the city is playing host to over 8,000 delegates from 193 countries at the prestigious 19-day Conference on Biological Diversity starting 1 October. This Global Biodiversity meet is billed as one of the biggest events to be held in India. And if any of those environmentalists visit the lake, they would find lumps of plaster of paris of 30,000 Ganesh idols floating around. There is no way the municipal workers can clear off the mess in less than 24 hours. Every year they take up to a week or even 10 days. [caption id=“attachment_464791” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Hussain Sagar Lake in Hyderabad. Michael Coghlan/Flickr[/caption] Even as Hyderabad indulges in window dressing for the conference, putting up temporary green cover to impress the delegates, the state of the 451-year-old lake would expose its tall claims. During the 10-day Ganesh festival, the idols translate into about 20,000 tonnes of plaster of paris and 300 tons of iron. A survey in 2009 showed that the Chemical oxygen demand (COD) and biological oxygen demand (BOD) in the lake (both measures to check the level of pollution in water) shot up dramatically after the festival. The COD jumped from 141 to 580 and BOD increased from 50 to 145. But it would be unfair to make the Elephant God the villain of the piece. The fact remains that for years now the Hussain Sagar Lake has been a victim of the lust of land sharks and converted into a virtual garbage bin. During the times of the Qutab Shahi and Asaf Jahi rulers, building tanks and creating lakes was considered a sacred activity. The Hussain Sagar Lake built in 1561, thirty years before the Charminar, served as a drinking water source till 1930. The water body was famous for its aquatic life and the delicious murrel fish in particular. Now the biodiversity index report that will be released during the conference admits a huge decline in the number of fish species, from 78 to 12 in the city lakes. No wonder that when students of a school in Hyderabad collected water from Hussain Sagar Lake and Shamirpet lake as part of a project in January this year, they reported that the former was jet black while the latter resembled the urine of a person suffering from jaundice. The original size of the Hussain Sagar Lake which for all practical purposes divides Hyderabad and Secunderabad, was 1,600 hectares. In 1995, National Remote Sensing Agency imagery declared its size was 416 hectares, which meant 3/4th of its area had been eaten away. Five years later, the Hyderabad Urban Development Authority (HUDA) issued a notification, where it put the area of the lake at 549 hectares. Despite a directive by the Andhra Pradesh High Court in 2001 that no permanent structure should be built near the water spread or the catchment area of the lake, violations in the name of promoting tourism have been more the norm than the exception. A popular but sad joke is that one day, the Buddha statue in the middle of the lake would end up as a traffic intersection. Unfortunate for a city once known as the city of lakes. Getting shrunk in the face of continuous onslaught is not the only problem. An equally big menace is that of sewage and pollutants being dumped into lakes all over the city. The Hussain Sagar Lake for instance has sewage from four nallahs dumped into it, with environmentalists dubbing the sewage treatment plant (STP) located inside the lake as an eyewash. The fear is that one day the lake will end up as a large sewage effluent tank in the heart of Hyderabad. In fact, the groundwater of any area within a radius of 5 km from the Hussainsagar is highly contaminated. Residents who have got borewell water tested have found the E.coli presence 20 times more than the permissible limit. Take bath with this borewell water at your own risk, is the advice given to those living in Hussainsagar’s neighbourhood. Worse is the abuse the Hussainsagar is subjected to. Studies have shown the cadmium level in the sludge of the lake is very high, thanks mainly due to industrial effluents from the unorganised sector of steel galvanising and electroplating units that come into it through different unmonitored nallahs. In 2004, HUDA had announced a Rs 300 crore Japan Bank International Cooperation (JBIC) aided project to prevent pollution of the Hussainsagar. It even announced that by 2010, pollution in the lake will be a thing of the past. That has not happened and worse, the project is in fact encroaching into the lake area, with a new STP built on the lake bed. At one point in time, if you claimed to be a good swimmer, you had to prove it by swimming till the Rock of Gibraltar in the middle of the Hussainsagar lake and come back. Today the feat is considered next to impossible, with the stench of the lake proving a huge challenge. International sailors in the past have grumbled about having to take part in a sailing championship in a lake of such poor water quality. Perhaps some drastic action is what the doctor would order. Like in January 1922, when the entire water of Hussainsagar was taken out for desilting and then filled with fresh rainwater. Hyderabad owes it to the Hussainsagar. The lake has been a witness to history as it was on the banks of the Hussainsagar that the first truce between Golconda ruled by Abdullah Qutab Shah and the Mughals commanded by Aurangzeb was negotiated in the mid-1600s. Four hundred years on, the lake is pleading for truce once again.