ISRO team to supervise the removal of an artificial lake in Gomukh, Uttarakhand

A team of experts including from the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) will soon survey Gomukh to supervise the removal of a garbage dump and an artificial lake, an official said on 6 July. Gomukh is the terminus of the Gangotri glacier and the source of the Bhagirathi river, one of the primary headstreams of the Ganga. [caption id=“attachment_4682681” align=“alignnone” width=“1280”] A man bathes at the confluence of the Alaknanda and Bhagirathi rivers which form the Ganges in Devprayag, India. Image: Reuters[/caption] A senior official told IANS that the dates of the survey by experts and environmentalists from the Wadia Institute, Dehradun, and ISRO would be fixed and the team would submit a report to the Uttarakhand High Court within three months. A bench of Chief Justice K.M. Joseph and Justice Sharad Kumar Sharma on 5 July directed the Uttarakhand government to get a survey of the Gomukh done every three months and apprise it of the findings and also get the dump around it cleared. The court order came after a Public Interest Litigation was filed by Delhi-based Ajay Gautam. The court also directed the government to ensure that an artificial lake developed at Gomukh be removed scientifically and at the earliest. The petitioner had apprised the court that in the 1.5 km periphery of Gomukh, thousands of tonnes of garbage had been dumped as mounds around the glacier and an artificial lake has been developed. Gautam had pleaded that it could lead to a Kedarnath-like tragedy of 2013 where the bursting of a lake led to flash floods and deaths of thousands. He also told the court that when the last survey was done by the state government, the lake was frozen and hence the inputs from the agencies were misplaced.