Expansion of the stormwater drainage from Chakalavani Cheruvu, as planned by GHMC towards prevention of flooding underneath the railway underpass at Lingampally, could prove to be a blessing for several encroachers who cleared the land and raised structures right in the lake bed.
Encroachments are rampant not only in the Chakalavani Cheruvu from which surplus water floods the high traffic road, but also within the Gopi Cheruvu upstream, from where the excess water flows here. Going by the satellite historical imagery, most of the encroachments are pretty recent, and happened over the past couple of years.
Satellite images show water spread of both the lakes at its peak in 2021, a year after copious rains in the city that led to flooding across several areas. Inflows from heavy rains of 2020 and 2021 had visibly reclaimed a large extent of the lake area, which had earlier been dry.
Encroachments in the Gopi Cheruvu’s lake bed could be seen even in the map from October, 2021, wedged in the lake’s water spread separating it into two.
In 2023, the extent where the landmass separated the lake could be seen completely encroached, with the lake bed filled and flattened. Three towers can be seen coming up right where the water had existed earlier.
With respect to the Chakalavani Cheruvu, the encroachment is even more brazen. A graveyard, marked within the lake’s full tank level (FTL), is now totally filled and flattened and brings down the capacity of the lake by almost half.
Preliminary notifications for both the lakes were issued way back in 2014, but till now, no final notification is issued, which means that the FTL area is not fenced yet. In 2013 when the survey for determination of the FTL area was carried out by HMDA together with the Irrigation department, large part of both the lakes was dry.
As a result, the FTL extent shown in the maps too appears grossly understated when compared with the maps of 2021 when the water spread was much larger.
Activist Lubna Sarwat vehemently opposes the GHMC’s proposal to construct an RCC box drain for clearing the surplus water, and demands that instead, the lakes should be cleared of encroachments and be allowed to fill to their full extent.
In a letter to the Minister for Municipal Administration & Urban Development K.T. Rama Rao with the attached satellite images, Ms. Sarwat said one of the first and urgent measures to stop flooding and to increase more percolation of rain water into the ground, is to restore the water bodies to their earlier extent.
