It is impossible to expect that Umiam Lake could ever truly be clean if its main feeder rivers, the Wahumkhrah and Umshyrpi, are still so heavily polluted, environmentalist Naba Bhattacharjee said today.
Umiam Lake is an artificial reservoir, created in the 1960s by the damming of the Umiam River for a hydroelectric project. Last year, the Meghalaya High Court took up a public interest litigation (PIL) relating to its pollution. The court had slammed the state government for the lack of urgency to clean the lake despite the huge amount of public money spent to protect water bodies.
Bhattacharjee was a member of the committee that was constituted to prepare a roadmap for the preservation of Umiam Lake.
According to him, the reservoir is not the culprit, it is the Wahumkhrah and Umshyrpi. Unless these two rivers are cared for nothing meaningful can be done as they both empty into Umiam Lake, Bhattacharjee said.
The 10 sq km lake is completely overburdened as it is effectively a septic tank for the entire city of Shillong and its catchment area, taking in lakhs of people spread over 220 sq km.
“There is so much pressure, especially anthropogenic factors impinging on this lake,” Bhattacharjee said. “We are tackling the problem by considering that, first, the source needs to be taken care of. The Urban Affairs Department is coming up with some infrastructure in this regard.”
Siltation is, as yet, not a big issue for the dam, as it has only reached around 4.7 percent when the worrying amount is 10 percent. However, what is also not good for the health of the lake have been the algal blooms that have been seen at the neck of the lake. Algal blooms are the result of nutrients like nitrogen or phosphorus (from fertilizer runoff or other forms of nutrient pollution) entering the aquatic system and causing excessive growth of algae. They can affect the entire ecosystem in negative ways.
Farms nearby can exacerbate the fertiliser runoff problem and the committee also found that construction debris also ends up in the lake; Umiam has been the preferred location of several resorts and guesthouses that have come up in recent years.
Bhattacharjee added that all of this has been included in the first report to the High Court, which, however, felt that more should be done.
