Chandigarh, June 3
These days the placid environs of Sukhna lake have been disturbed by the constant sound of an army of earth movers, trucks and tractors plying busily in and out of the dried up bed of the lake. The Regulator End, as it is called, of the lake has been cordoned off for walkers, as tonnes of silt is scooped out from the bed of the lake and then transported out. The frenzy is part of a renewed effort by the Chandigarh Administration to desilt the lake before the monsoon arrives apart from providing pockets of storage of water in the lake’s outer reaches.

For the lake, which is literally on its deathbed, it may be a case of too little, too late. Much of the silt built up from 1958, when the artificial lake was formed by damming the Sukhna Choe, up to 1988. In the absence of any measure during these three decades to check the flow of silt, thousands of tonnes of silt flowed down from the nearby Shivalik hills and was deposited on the lake bed.

That flow was reduced when both the Chandigarh Administration and Haryana Government built over 120 check dams in the catchment area of Sukhna located in the Shivalik hills to prevent the flow of silt and also act as storage for rainwater. Another 70 earthen dams also came up to perform somewhat the same function - so in all 190 of these man-made bundhs were put up to prevent silt.

The anti-siltation measures did help: the siltation rate dropped from more than 140 tonnes to less than five tonnes a hectare. But by then so much silt had deposited on the lake bed that mini-hills of it formed at the Regulator End. These became filled with vegetation considerably shrinking the lake environs and absorbing precious water that would have otherwise flowed to the lake. The original area that the lake spanned has considerably shrunk as a result. In 1958, the lake encompassed 228 hectares. Today it spans 148 hectares - down by almost a third.

It was only in 1990 that the UT Administration took an initiative to remove silt from the bed starting by deploying machinery and also involving local residents in the shape of ‘shram dan’. However, experts differ on the execution of shram dan as it is believed that shram dan or manual de-silting process only turned out to be a futile exercise, which hardly helped removing any evident amount silt from the lakebed.

More recently, the UT Administration started making the “actual” revival efforts in the last three years. But that is like bolting the stable after the horse has escaped. The damage has already been done. The UT Administration claims that till date, more than 76 lakhs cubic feet of silt has been removed since they started desilting the lakes.

The bigger job is removal of silt from approximately 74 acres of land in the Regulator End. The UT Administration intends to remove up to 110 lakh cubic feet ofsilt, in the Regulator end. The official deadline is three years and the cost pegged at Rs 4 crores. However, experts feel it will take longer and may even cost more. “If monsoon gets a little delayed, it would be beneficial for the desilting work in progress,” claims a senior UT official. As of now, the authorities have pumped in seven excavators and 109 dumpers, trucks, trolleys to remove silt from this patch.

Meanwhile, the Punjab and Haryana HC is already looking into the matter of cleaning up of the lake after a morning walker filed a writ petition. The administration is expected to submit reports in the court about the work done on ground. The administration will as usual wax eloquent about its desilting efforts. But experts say the steps taken are just band-aid stuff. The danger of the lake disappearing altogether is real and needs concerted, long-term efforts rather than episodical or knee-jerk reactions.

Tomorrow: Sukhna’s killer weed