The famous Dal Lake has shrunk to less than half its original size with its capacity down to 40 per cent, officials said today as Governor N N Vohra invited the Navy and other experts to tackle issues faced by the water body.
Vohra has also asked his adviser, B B Vyas, to get in touch with Chairman-cum-Managing Director (CMD) of the Dredging Corporation of India (DCI) Rajesh Tripathi, he said.
The Navy Chief had said Vice-Admiral S K Jha (Retd), former chief hydrographer, could assist the Jammu and Kashmir government in formulating an approach to deal with the problems faced by the Dal lake, the spokesman added.
"At the request of the state government, Vice-Admiral Jha (Retd) and Tripathi visited Srinagar on 3031 July and undertook separate surveys and assessments to identify the problems," he said.
The spokesman said the governor chaired a meeting at the Raj Bhavan today where Jha and Tripathi presented their assessments.
"From the assessment made by the CMD of DCI, it was learnt that the size of Dal has shrunk from its original area of 22 sq km to about 10 sq km, that the water quality of Dal has deteriorated due to intense pollution caused by untreated sewage and solid wastes that flow into the lake, encroachments of water channels and clogging has diminished the circulation and inflows into the lake, leading to extensive weed growth of water hyacinth which has emerged as a health hazard
"It was also learnt that due to siltation, encroachment etc, the depth of the lake has reduced at many places and its total capacity has gone down to 40 per cent, the continuing night soil discharge from the 800-900 house boats is causing extreme pollution," he said.
The official said consequent to the discussions, it was decided that the Navy chief would be asked for help in a comprehensive bathymetric survey of the Dal-Nageen lake to establish a benchmark database to decide the extent of dredging, etc., to be carried out at the various parts of the lake.
He said Vohra directed officials concerned to take immediate steps to implement the decisions taken in the meeting and asked Chief Secretary B V R Subrahmanyam to closely monitor further progress.
Vohra would be personally reviewing progress on the basis of the chief secretary's reports in regard to this very important project, the spokesman said.
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