Waterless, clueless and worse....

By Bindu Jacob

NEW DELHI, JUNE 15. While the Delhi Government's much trumpeted ``Clean Yamuna'' campaign recently sought to restore the Capital's lifeline to its past glory, the city's other 38 water bodies -- lakes, jheels, marshes and natural depressions,

constituting its all-important water buffer -- face a bleak future. Most stand reduced to sewage disposal dumps; others are being overtaken by human settlements.

Alarmed at the rapid deterioration, the Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage (INTACH) -- which submitted a report on these dying water bodies to the Delhi Government way back in 1998 -- has been pressing desperately for steps to ensure their conservation. It claims that ``poor management of these water bodies, lack of concrete conservation plans, rising pollution and rapid increase in localised demands'' are pushing these precious eco-balancers to ``a premature death''.

While INTACH charges that not much has been done over the past three years to preserve these ``reservoirs'', the Government claims that conservation efforts are in full swing.``The pondage of Najafgarh Jheel and Bhalaswa Lake is being increased; restoration work has been initiated at Sanjay Lake in Mayur Vihar, Jahangirpuri Lake and Paschim Vihar Lake; and plans are afoot to construct 13 check-dams all over the city and desilt 70 ponds,'' says Delhi's Environment Minister, Dr. A. K. Walia.

But this clearly is not enough. ``Three years after our report, actual work is yet to begin. The water bodies taken up for conservation are not even a small fraction of the ones that need to be saved,'' rue INTACH officials.

Environmentalists assert that it is essential to conserve these water bodies as Delhi faces a water deficit of 250 million gallons per day. The ``killing'' of these natural water reservoirs would spell doom: ``their slow death would aggravate water shortage and increase salinity.''

Pointing to Najafgarh Jheel, the report says this natural depression collecting local drainage has shrunk from 225 sq.km to just 6 sq km. It now forms only during heavy rains and spreads over a surface area of 600 hectares. The famous Bhalaswa Lake in North Delhi has also been half-encroached and built upon. The old horse-shoe lake that once was part of the Yamuna river course now spans only 70 hectares.

With greed and inadequate check choking the natural lake at Mayapuri, it is already dying due to mushrooming of water hyacinth and accumulation of debris. In fact, the rot started when the Public Works Department entrusted with the task of building the Mayapuri flyover dumped construction debris into the lake. One-third of the water body was covered with debris by the time a notification was issued and the practice discontinued. The situation worsened when slum clusters came up on the covered part.

With other natural depressions also in a bad shape, INTACH has called for an urgent restoration programme lest the city's water- buffers succumb to the pressures of increasing population and growing greed of land mafia.

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