Revived lake in Jubilee Hills receives its first sewage flow

It is a tiny oval-shaped pond nestled inside a sliver of a green patch at the intersection of Road No.5 with the Road No.10 which leads to the Jubilee Hills Checkpost.

The pond has undergone a makeover recently, thanks to the lake adoption agreement between the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation and a global service organisation. Instead of the slime dumped on the edges seen about six months ago, one can see a well-laid walking path encircling the pond, lined by fully grown trees. A parapet wall separates the walkway from the freshly created revetment sloping into the lake, and an occasional tree rises from amid the stoned slope, slanting towards the lake. In some other scenario, the trees would have created charming reflection in the pond water, providing a picturesque image for the viewers. Here, they were lost in the moss green water stagnant in the pond, which was not there a day earlier.

“It’s galeez water,” says the worker, when asked if it was stagnant rain water or the water flowing from sewage pipelines. Lake revival plan here entailed diversion of sewage along with de-silting, construction of revetment and creation of a walkway. Accordingly, sewage was diverted ahead of the pond from a massive drain, and fresh inlets and outlets were created, connecting them to the stormwater drain network.

“The sewage entering the lake is not from sewerage lines or the old stormwater drains, but the freshly laid drains,” says Uday Krishna Peddireddi from Vata Foundation, who has been tracking the pond development effort. He questions the whole effort and funds pumped into the project, without addressing the basic issue of sewage being let into the stormwater drains, which is an omnipresent phenomenon across Hyderabad.

“The mechanical way the officialdom functions is pathetic. They reduced the size of the pond by dumping truckloads of soil and debris into it for creation of walkway. It is not even in a position to receive the rushing stream of flood water down the road in the event of copious rains. It will end up as another very expensive sewage receptacle,” he fumes. Officials from GHMC were not available for a comment.