Stinking Durgam gets new bridge
Activists blame government for misplaced priorities; say revival of lake is important than cable bridge
The cable bridge over Durgam Cheruvu will run across a highly polluted, shrinking lake. While `184 crore has been sanctioned for the bridge, very little has been done to improve the condition of the lake. The new sewerage treatment plant is dysfunctional and sewerage from surrounding colonies flows into the lake.
Once, one of the largest lakes in the Cyberabad area, it is now filled with stagnating garbage and covered with water hyacinth. “The catchment area of the lake and the surrounding area has been totally encroached upon. One estimate reveals over 100 million litres of sewerage flows into the Durgam Cheruvu every day,” says Lubna Sarwath of Save Our Urban Lakes, a citybased lake protection organisation.
She says aquatic life has almost disappeared. The water spread area has been shrinking over the years and the benefits of the 5 MLD sewage treatment plant of HMDA in the lake area has been nullified by huge quantities of raw domestic sewage and waste water flowing directly into the lake through the open drain.
The lake was encroached upon over the years and the same was reported in these columns.
In 2015, the TS Government had formed a committee to look into encroachments on 65 acres, but nothing has been done to remove it. The report submitted by the state revenue department and Hyderabad Urban Development Authority (Huda) to the Legislature Estimates Committee, on lake encroachment, revealed that eight colonies have been built on the Full tank level of the lake.
Going back in history, Huda had approved five layouts adjacent to Durgam Cheruvu towards the northern side prior to 2000, as per the sanctioned master plan. In 1992, one V. K. Singh sold 13 acres of land to Amar Co-Op Housing Society, which approached Huda for layout sanction. Once the layout was approved, the buyers approached the erstwhile Municipal Corporation of Hyderabad (MCH) for building permission, following which construction started in 1998. In 2000, heavy rains battered Hyderabad and almost 50 per cent of lowlying areas were submerged and Durgam Cheruvu waters entered many colonies. In 2003, the irrigation department constituted a lakes division, and in 2004, this division started erecting FTL poles based on the 2000 floods.
The officials enquired locally where the lake water had entered and fixed the poles. In 2013, Huda cancelled all approved layouts.