A heap of iron scrap lies bent out of shape in a corner of the Interception & Diversion facility, a yard with an overwhelming odour, a mix of sewage and industrial filth. This is where trash is filtered before the notorious Kukatpally nala froths into the Hussainsagar. One of the largest manmade lakes in Asia, it connects the two historic cities of Hyderabad and Secunderabad.
“They are from the Telangana agitation time when railings broke under the weight of the surge of crowds,” says the security guard posted near the diminutive entrance gate. He is referring to the Million March in 2011, a decisive time in the State’s history when thousands surrounded the lake with the rallying cry of ‘Jai Telangana’.
The 16th-century lake, which turned 460 this year, is older than Hyderabad city itself, a silent sentinel to the city’s several tumultuous transformations, including the historic Telangana movement, which led to separate statehood in 2014.
Dark, deadly water from the drain snakes through the I&D facility. Floating in the ominous flow is sundry litter — plastic covers, bags, plastic bottles, packaging discards, disposable plates and cups, rags.
The I&D facility has four mechanical screens to filter such trash, of which only one is working now. “We merely remove the garbage. The water is diverted and sent to the Amberpet sewage treatment plant on the Musi river,” an official monitoring the operations says.
Only a part of the water coming from the stormwater drain goes for sewage treatment through the I&D structure. A major portion carrying industrial waste from localities such as Sanathnagar, Jeedimetla, and Kukatpally, flows directly into the lake. There are two other such I&D diversion centres.
Manufacturing islands
“They were created by HMDA by bringing the silt in the lake to one place. They are manufacturing land out of the lake” Lubna SarwathActivist
On the vastness of the lake’s water are three islands of greenery, meticulously landscaped by Hyderabad Metropolitan Development Authority (HMDA) with grass, shrubbery, and palms: “They were created by HMDA by bringing the silt in the lake to one place. They are manufacturing land out of the lake,” says activist Lubna Sarwath, who has been fighting a hard battle for decades to save Hussainsagar.
The dark silt from the lake, which forms the bottom-most layer of the island, is overlaid by fresh earth dug up from elsewhere, and topped up with the greenery.
Bengaluru-based techie Anand Malligavad had experimented with it in lakes there. Obtaining corporate funding, he had dredged up the silt from the lake using excavators, to create islands, in a bid to clear the water of sewage and filth.
The silt from the lake was found to be unfit for dumping, at the solid waste management facility in Jawahar Nagar, on the outskirts of Hyderabad, due to the high concentration of chemical pollutants and carcinogenic substances. Each year HMDA spends ₹3.5 to 4 crore on the lake’s maintenance.
“An encroachment is an encroachment whether you do it from the edge of the lake or from the middle. Heaping the silt in islands will not reduce pollution in the lake, as the pollutants will continue to leach into the water”K. Babu RaoRetired scientist, IICT
“An encroachment is an encroachment whether you do it from the edge of the lake or from the middle,” says Hyderabad-based K. Babu Rao, a scientist who retired from the Indian Institute of Chemical Technology (IICT). “Heaping the silt in islands will not reduce pollution in the lake, as the pollutants will continue to leach into the water,” he adds.
Saturated with pollutants
August 2023 data on the Telangana State Pollution Control Board (TSPCB)’s website, shows that all the water quality parameters, including biochemical and chemical oxygen demand, total suspended solids, and total coliform and faecal coliform, are all way above the permissible levels in the lake water.
A 2019 study by IIT-Hyderabad found that heavy metals in the water were high. Samples collected from near the Kukatpally drain revealed that cadmium was 18.05 times higher than criteria continuous concentration that has an adverse effect on aquatic life. Manganese was 10.73 times over the acceptable range and lead was 8.2 times higher.
The research paper attributed heavy metal concentrations to the manufacturing industries of batteries and electroplating. Chromium was higher near the sites of Ganesh idol immersion and came from the paint used, but also from tanning industries.
Further down Necklace Road — a boulevard in Hyderabad, adjoining the Hussainsagar — exists the recently-inaugurated Lake Front Park overlooking one of the freshly-created islands, for which Telangana Minister for Municipal Administration & Urban Development K.T. Rama Rao showered praise on HMDA authorities.
The area where the park has come up, with its elevated boardwalks jutting onto the lake providing a ‘deck-view’ for visitors, is the full tank level (FTL) area of the lake, as demarcated by the Irrigation department authorities. The park, together with the pollution-packed islands, will only be another milestone in the long history of land reclamation from the Hussainsagar by the State authorities.
Eaten up by urbanisation
The original extent of Hussainsagar, when it was created in 1561-62 under the Golconda ruler Ibrahim Quli Qutub Shah, is not available. However, three centuries later, in 1898, a photographic account of the city by Claude Campbell was published in the book Glimpses of the Nizam’s Dominions. Along with an exuberant description of the lake, the author set the circumference at 11 miles (close to 18 km). A Google map measurement shows that the circumference has at about 10 km now.
A report from 2005 by a Supreme Court-appointed special committee estimated that the lowest possible extent of the lake, calculated based on the circumference from Campbell’s book, would have to be 1,814 hectares. The FTL records of the Irrigation department show the lake area as 570 hectares, of which the water spread is about 350 hectares.
According to anecdotal accounts, the original lake spread extended from the location where the present Mint Museum stands on the southern side of the lake, up to Raj Bhavan, the official residence of the Governor on the north western side, encompassing the State secretariat building.
“While demarcating FTL boundaries, we took into account the Survey of India maps from 1956. This did not include the State Secretariat,” a senior officer of Irrigation department clarifies, requesting anonymity.
The lake served as the only source of drinking water to Hyderabad for close to 375 years. The first piped water supply started in 1864, to the British Residency and surrounding areas. People around present-day Abids, Public Gardens, Koti Women’s college, Osmania University, and several other areas consumed raw water from the lake, without the need for purification.
It took less than 40 years for Hussainsagar to fall into ruin after Osmansagar emerged as the drinking water destination. It became a receptacle of untreated sewage and industrial effluents starting from the late 1960s when there was a push for industrial growth following the formation of Andhra Pradesh, for which Hyderabad was the designated capital city.
Encumbering encroachments
As per the government’s own records, the area reclaimed from the lake for ‘developmental’ projects has amounted to close to 26 hectares, or 64 acres. A combination of people’s needs and political opportunism led to settlement of a slum — MS Maqta — right in the FTL area of the lake. The 16 hectares of lake area it occupies sees floods every monsoon season. Roads and recreational facilities gobbled up a major portion. The famed NTR Marg, Ministers Road, and Prasad’s multiplex came up right in the FTL of the lake.
Another decision was the construction of Necklace Road, recently renamed P.V. Narasimha Rao Marg, in the middle of the lake, during the late 1990s. Heaps of debris and excavated silt from the lake was used as the bund to fill the water spread area, in order to create an alternative road to Tank Bund connecting Hyderabad and Secunderabad. Soon, the road, together with NTR Marg, became the go-to destination for tourism and weekend recreation. The lake became a garbage receptacle.
Successive governments circumvented High Court orders to issue notifications declaring a part of the lake area as cremation grounds, in order to facilitate construction of the memorials for former chief minister N.T. Rama Rao and former prime minister P.V. Narasimha Rao.
A number of structures, including a food court, a restaurant, a water park and event destination developed in public-private-partnership were all encroachments of the lake. The latest lake front park is merely an addition to the long list of State-sponsored violations of the lake’s integrity.
Attempts at revival of this historic lake have always been half-hearted and linked with the opportunity for flow of funds. The Hussainsagar Catchment Improvement Project, which began in 2006 with ₹310-crore loan obtained from the Japan International Co-operation Agency, and concluded in 2016, failed to rid the lake of pollutants.
At ₹370 crore, the project saw augmentation of sewage treatment facilities up to a capacity of 50 million litres per day at two drains, Picket nala and Balkapur nala. The flows from two more drains, Banjara nala and the Kukatpally nala, were proposed to be diverted.
The HMDA has also spent several crores of rupees on annual maintenance of the lake through measures such as bioremediation, and floating trash collection.
Committees without a cause
In 2020, the National Green Tribunal appointed a joint committee in response to a petition by Sarwath, with members drawn from the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB), Ministry of Environment and Forests, IIT-Hyderabad, and the National Institute of Hydrology to devise an action plan to protect Hussainsagar from pollution.
The committee observed that despite the I&D structure at Kukatpally drain, 30-40% of the untreated water flows directly to the lake. It also noted the overflow of sewage into the lake at the sewage treatment plants (STPs) near Balkapur and Picket nalas, during the peak hours of the day and in the monsoon when stormwater mixes with sewage flows. The existing capacity of the treatment facility and the mode of discharge will not resolve the issues with regard to the water quality, the joint committee’s report noted.
The government, in its response, submitted that a total 17 STPs are being proposed along the Kukatpally drain, to prevent pollutants from entering the lake. None are operational yet.
In its final order, the apex green tribunal issued directions for the constitution of another joint committee headed by the additional chief secretary-urban development, and with members drawn from National Wetland Authority, State Wetland Authority, TSPCB, CPCB, and Director-Environment, Telangana.
“It was a disappointing verdict, hurriedly given to reduce pendency. What is the use of a committee which comprises the perpetrators? Will the proposed sewage treatment plants remove industrial effluents? Instead of cosmetic solutions, we need the issue to be addressed at the source,” says Sarwath.
The joint committee is yet to be constituted, but meanwhile the State government has gone with optical grandeur. This year the ₹616-crore State secretariat spread over 28 acres was opened, a 125-foot bronze statue of B.R. Ambedkar erected, and the Telangana martyr’s memorial constructed in the lake’s original spread and its foreshore area. The islands made from the polluted sediment dredged out from the lake add to the optics.
Special chief secretary Arvind Kumar says the islands were not deliberate. “The silt from the inlet channels was blocking the inflows, so it was brought together to allow the flow to continue,” he says. The HMDA is planning to remove them after the Assembly election in Telangana. The greenery was added, just to make it look pleasant, he adds.
