90,000 tonne removed, Ambazari still choking on hyacinth sprawl

Nagpur: Ambazari lake is gasping for air, and the issue is not being addressed effectively. Ambazari Lake, the city’s largest lake spread across 15.4 sq km which is maintained by the Nagpur Municipal Corporation (NMC), is completely covered with weeds despite daily efforts to remove six to 10 truckloads of hyacinth.TOI had earlier reported about sewage from industrial units from MIDC being released in Ambazari Lake. Water hyacinth grows rapidly when industrial waste concentrations increase and lowers the amount of dissolved oxygen in the water. Additional municipal commissioner Anchal Goyal told TOI that NMC reached out to NEERI on Friday to carry out an investigation. “Multiple sewage sources exist within the NMC limits, including Wadi municipal council, MIDC, and other. Only after conducting a thorough investigation will we be able to determine the cause,” she stated. Our constant efforts to check widespread water hyacinth would be useless untill we find the root cause, Goyal added.NMC intensified its drive to remove hyacinth from the lakebed early this month. “Now, we have been removing hyacinth even on Saturdays and Sundays,” said an official from NMC’s solid waste management department. NMC began cleaning the lake on August 2 last year.To remove trash and weeds, it deployed a self-propelled, indigenous, and innovative airboat system known as ‘Jaldost’ on September 7. “The NMC has been removing around 6-10 truckloads of weed every day for the past 173 days. Roughly 1,500 truckloads with each transporting approximately 6 tonne of hyacinth have been removed and dumped at Bhandewadi landfill,” the official added.According to MPCB regional officer Hema Deshpande, discharging wastewater into the lake is the main reason for the weeds. “Sewage water contains detergent waste, which feeds the weeds,” she added.Every day, at least 10m of raw sewage water is drained into the lake by Wadi Municipal Corporation (WMC). The WMC is setting up a sewage treatment plant, and once commissioned, it would help in controlling pollution in the lake, she added. The NMC had also formed two different committees to curb pollution in the water body.One of the teams, which comprises experts including NEERI director, MPCB regional officer, VNIT’s retired professor (environment) Vasant Masaulkar, and Green Vigil Foundation’s Kaustav Chatterjee, was formed to seek technical advice and guidance to keep the waterbody rid of weeds. However, not a single meeting of the expert panel has been convened to date, sources in the NMC said.
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