HYDERABAD: A city lake that was beautified and revived with establishment of a sewage treatment plant (STP) and a park as long as 12 years ago is a stark reality of how the efforts of the state government to protect lakes and preventing water pollution prove to be an exercise in futility due to poor urban planning. Langar houz lake, that is getting polluted with huge amounts of sewage flowing into it directly, can be seen foaming and frothing on a daily basis even today.
In 2005, the erstwhile Hyderabad Urban Development Authority (HUDA) had constructed a 1.2 Million Liters per Day (MLD) STP beside the lake to restore it so that sewage from nearby areas can be channelised to the STP, treated and then released into the lake. A park was also constructed beside the lake as part of beautification.
However, 12 years later since then, a huge open drain has cropped up carrying sewage water from households directly dumping sewage into lake, without treatment. As households mushroomed in areas around lake over the years without proper sewage connections, sewage lines from these houses were connected to this open drain. An official of HMWS&SB said that the existing STP will not prove useful to treat the large amount of sewage being carried by this open drain and an STP of about 150 MLD will be required to treat it, for which there is no space to construct around the lake. While the 1.2MLD STP releases treated water into the lake, its work is negated by the huge amount of sewage that directly gets mixed in the lake.
Even the 1.2MLD STP that came under the authority of HMWS&SB from the erstwhile HUDA, was lying unused for about three and half years and was recently given on contract to the infrastructure company, IVRCL for operating it. Courtesy sewage flowing into the lake, it is also covered almost completely with water hyacinth that thrives on the nutrients provided by the sewage.
While the vegetation in the park is good, the park which gets many visitors everyday, sadly does not have functioning toilets. The compound wall of the park is also breached and people can be seen entering into the park from adjacent colonies through the breached portion without buying the `5 entry ticket.