Lake braces up for annual assault

With less than two weeks to go for the annual Ganesh festival, some 50,000 idols of all sizes are in the process of being installed at festival pandals around the city.

A majority of them, something like 35,000 idols, mostly made of plaster of Paris, are destined to be immersed in the Hussain Sagar after the festival.

 It’s an annual assault on the lake, one that once used to supply drinking water to the city but is now not fit to water your garden.

 No initiative has been able to stop the city from gnawing away at the lake, which has shrunk by 40 per cent in the last seven decades.

 The Hussain Sagar used to sprawl over 583 hectares in 1934.

 It has now shrunk to 349 hectares.

 People who live in Gagan Mahal and Somajiguda remember how the lake used to be much cleaner than what it is and much closer.

Says H Venkat Reddy, a long-time resident of Gagan Mahal, “We used to swim in the lake where the Mint Compound is today.

 On the far shore, the railway tracks at Khairatabad used to pass over the water.

 The Prasad’s Imax today stands on what used to be lake land.

” Much of the encroachment has been done by the government itself or facilitated by it.

 The continued Ganesh immersion in the lake is proof that the government’s heart does not lie in saving the lake.

 All efforts to inject some environmental sense into this quasi-religious activity have been half-hearted.

 The Andhra Pradesh Pollution Control Board (APPCB) has found that each year there is a spike in pollution parameters immediately after the Ganesh immersion (see graphic).

 Further, the plaster of Paris in the idols disintegrates very slowly, which clouds the lake.

 When it does disintegrate, it forms a impervious layer on the lake bed.

 Most of all, the heavy metals in the paint, such as cadmium, lead and nickel, are deadly to the health of aquatic life in the lake.

 The strain does not only tell on the lake, but also on civic authorities and the police.

 The Hyderabad Metropolitan Development Authority (HMDA) removes a total of 30,000 cubic feet of material from the Necklace Road part of the Hussain Sagar in the two days after immersion using 700 labourers, 100 tippers, and a crane 40 tonne capacity.

 The GHMC does the same thing on Tank Bund and NTR Marg stretches of the lake.

 Plus, there is the police mobilization to keep the peace in the city during the Ganesh paocesson.

 More than 7000 cops are drafted from other parts of the state and forces have to be requisitioned from the CRPF and RAF.

 While these are managing measures, little has been done by way of ridding the lake of the problem.

 The switch to mud idols of Ganesha is fraught with resistance from several quarters, including the local pandal organizers and the idol makers.

 As a result several green activists have approached the courts to decree a ban on the use of plaster of Paris in the idols altogether.