HYDERABAD: The Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) would utilise modern weed harvesters for removal of water hyacinth and weeds from different lakes of Greater Hyderabad on a pilot basis.
Weed harvesters is said to be an environmentally sound method of controlling excessive aquatic plant growth and nuisance vegetation in water bodies. These heavy duty work machines are efficient in management of submerged, emergent and free floating aquatic vegetation.
The weed harvesters are successfully being used in River Ganga cleaning and Dal Lake in Kashmir for removal of water hyacinth and green algal weeds. One of the weed harvester that was used in Ganga cleaning is being brought to the city in a day or two. GHMC wanted to conduct a trial run and if found satisfactory, it will acquire the weed harvesters soon. These machines are imported from the USA.
As many as 14 lakes in the city where there is a hyacinth bloom, the weed harvester will be pressed into service to remove the weeds from the lake.
The lakes identified in GHMC Circles for removal of water hyacinth include Chinnayasuri cheruvu (Alwal) Vennelagadda cheruvu and Pariki Cheruvu (Quthbullapur), RK puram cheruvu (Malkajgiri), Palle cheruvu in Mailardevpally, Gurram cheruvu in Barkas and Surram Cheruvu in Bandlaguda (Rajendranagar), Kapra cheruvu and Errakunta Cheruvu (Kapra), Nalla cheruvu and Saroornagar lake (Uppal), Durgam Cheruvu (Serilingampally-1) and Gopinath cheruvu (Serilingampally-2) and Sunnam cheruvu in Kukatpally.
The hyacinth and algal weeds present in these water bodies ranges from 10 percent to 90 percent.
Taking a average thickness of 20 cm after cutting, it will cover 78,0000 sq.mts (which is equivalent to 19.50 acres of f water hyacinth area). To remove hyacinth from the 14 water bodies, it would take two to three months, they added.