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Kathmandu Thursday November 15, 2001 Kartik 30, 2058.
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A
plan to save Phewa lake could be adding to woes
By Birodh Pandey
POKHARA, Nov 14 - The
future of the magnificent Phewa Lake- a popular tourist attraction – appears to be
bleak as both the government and local bodies are persistently implementing what is being
called "faulty developmental programmes."
In a recent move to
save Phewa Lake from siltation problem, the Pokhara municipality has constructed drains
around the periphery of the lake as part of the Second Tourism Infrastructure Development
Project funded by Asian Development Bank (ADB) and His Majestiy’s Government (HMG).
The drains are supposed to discharge storm water into the lake. Several sedimentation
purification points along the system were also envisaged by the project but only one has
been built.
The trouble is,
alongwith the rain water, the drains are also discharging urban sewage into the lake.
Environmentalists say, a disaster looms large if the practice is not stopped soon.
"Though the sole
purpose of the drainage is to discharge only rainwater, in some places the urban discharge
is directly connected to it", admits Sharad Mohan Kafle, Engineer at Pokhara
Environmental Improvement Project which is currently undertaking the work.
Such activity has
alarmed conservationists. Dr Roshan Shrestha, Water Quality Expert at Environment and
Public Health Organisation (ENPHO), a Kathmandu-based organisation, says that apart from
siltation there is direct flow of urban waste with high concentration of phosphorous that
has already led to deterioration of water quality.
"The presence of
water hyacinth and algae blooms is evidence to show that water is being polluted," he
said. According to him the municipality should have constructed scientific filtration tank
that can not only segregate the sediments but also the chemical pollutants.
The municipality denies
that sewage is being dumped into the lake. "The drain is merely meant for the
discharge of rain water not for the urban sewage", says Man Bahadur Gurung, Deputy
Mayor of Pokhara Sub-Metropolitan City. "We will strictly see to it that no urban
sewage has been dumped into these drains". However, he admits to having failed to
build the siltation tanks as proposed in the programme due to land dispute.
Siltation is a massive
problem in Pokhara, a valley nestled at the foothills of the fragile Himalayas. Geologists
say that within the other half of the next decade Phewa will turn into marshy plains if
corrective measures are not taken soon.
"If government is
to save Phewa from being rapidly buried then it must build number of siltation
tanks", says Dr Megh Raj Dhital, Geologist at Tribhuvan University. According to him
the problem of siltation will only be worse with the heavy monsoon downpour. Only one silt
filtration tank, as is the case now, will not suffice.
An aerial survey
carried out by Air Map Italy shows that present size of the lake is half from what it used
to be in 1970’s. The problem, the scientists say, is the rapid encroachment of the
lake
by silt.
The immediate sufferers
of this unresolved problem will be the dwellers of Pokhara whose fortune has been paved by
the booming tourism business around the lake. Tourism entrepreneurs and locals worry that
if no efforts are made, the magnificent gift of nature will be something of past.
"We are letting
away the hen laying golden egg from our hands", says Sundar Kumar Shrestha, President
of Regional Hotel Association. He says that tourism entrepreneurs were first optimistic
about the plan of the municipality to drain the water as they had facilities of sediment
filtration and promised to drain only rainwater. But, he now rues, it was all in paper
only.
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