Ooty lake to take new, cleaner avatar

Ooty: Call it a new trend or new millennium effort to regain the old glory of Ooty lake, the Nilgiris district administration has taken steps to desilt the sprawling lake spread over 65 acres here, a popular tourist attraction for boat rides and tourism fun, to slowly help it become a fresh water lake in future.

 It is a known fact that this near two century years old famed lake is pool of mixture of drainage and sewage as over the centuries, unplanned development and discharge of sewage  into the lake had affected its ecology. The Kodappamund channel that traverses the town and drains into the lake carrying the sewage and other wastes is the major culprit that vitiates the aqua-quality of this lake.  While it is almost a dead-lake, only boat rides and related tourism activities brings some revenue to the government.

 Stating that the state government has sanctioned Rs 70 lakh for the purpose of desilting and clean-up drive for the Ooty lake, Ms.J. Innocent Divya, collector of Nilgiris, said  that now plans have been drawn to drain the water in the lake to the desired depth and extent, to take up the desilting works in the next couple of months.  Water Resources Organization, state government wing, has been entrusted with this task, the pro-active collector noted.

 Simultaneously, works will be done at the Kodappamund channel, by the agri-engineering department, to plug the stealthy discharge of sewage and other drainage into the channel.  Once this was done, then this channel will serve the purpose of storm water channel.  So, in future only the rain water will fill up the lake that in turn will help the lake to slowly regain is freshwater status, Ms. Divya explained.

Meanwhile, Mr N. Sadiq Ali, founder of Wildlife and Nature Conservation Trust, here called for setting up a ‘Lake Conservation and Development Authority(LCDA)’ to manage the Ooty lake as well as other lakes such as Sandhinallah and Pykara, across the Nilgiris.

 “There is no single authority for management of lakes in the hills . That’s the reason for poor management of lakes and pollution in them. For example, the PWD has some stakes in the Ooty lake, whereas the boating there is controlled by the tourism department, while the channels draining to the lake are  under the control of  the municipal administration;  when this is so, naturally, there will be lack of co-ordination among the different departments and problem in allocation of funds.  So, it is better to set up LCDA to bring the lake management under one administration wing to conserve,  manage, maintain and to do the necessary development works without spoiling the originality of the environs of  the Ooty lake and other lakes inn Nilgiris,” Mr. Sadiq Ali suggested.