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Business News/ Opinion / Blogs/  Pune Newsletter | Saving a lake in Pune
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Pune Newsletter | Saving a lake in Pune

The Model Colony lake shows that when citizens assert their rights, the civic authority has to take note

Increasingly, across the country, water bodies like lakes and drains are drying out as urbanization leads to their misuse by builders often in collusion with local authorities. Photo: Mint (Mint)Premium
Increasingly, across the country, water bodies like lakes and drains are drying out as urbanization leads to their misuse by builders often in collusion with local authorities. Photo: Mint (Mint)

Civic activists in Pune have moved from angry emails, protests, conversations with the authorities and articles in newspapers to raising a quiet cheer: they have foiled once again, an attempt to disturb a tranquil and harmonious ecosystem that was not troubling anyone.

The first people heard of the Model Colony lake being drained was when Shabnum Poonawalla, member, lake committee of the Model Colony Parisar Sudharana Samiti (Model Colony area improvement committee), dashed off an email on 23 April: that the lake which had shrunk for the first time in over a 100 years, was being drained by the civic body, the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC). In two days, she said, the lake was dry, all the fish dead and the delicate balance in that lake destroyed.

That set off agitated emails, meetings and newspaper articles as everyone was agitated over the deliberate killing of the lake and all that it symbolised.

For the past week to 10 days, these activists and citizens have been worked up over the draining of the lake in the very quiet and upmarket Model Colony area in Pune. The lake has no real name other than the Model Colony lake or the Lakaki lake, the latter name derived from the Kirloskar family home Lakaki (the initials of the group’s founder Laxman Kashinath Kirloskar or Lakaki as written in Marathi) which overlooks the lake.

This 130-year-old lake was created out of a stone quarry, when all the old homes in the area were built from the material. It has remained a green gem, right in the middle of the urban development around it, prized for its bio-diversity and as an example of sustainable living. The area had no mosquitoes despite the presence of the water body.

How it came to be drained was that over a fortnight ago, the civic authorities decided the lake needed de-silting although it is not a source of drinking water. That de-silting was resisted by people who live there, by the Model Colony Parisar Sudharana Samiti, by botanists... almost everyone!

Meera Bondre, a botanist who has been studying the lake, its bio-diversity and organisms that thrive there since 1969, said, “This lake is a rare example of a perfectly well-balanced ecosystem. Its bio-diversity makes for a stable ecosystem since it attracts migratory birds as well as resident birds and has been known to provide a harvest of 25 kg fish a day... it is possible to make this a bird park as well as a fish farm. I call it a microbial bio-reserve."

This is not the first time the lake has been threatened: the first attempt was to build over it—back in 1984-85. That attempt failed when people agitated angrily and vociferously. The same thing happened this time: the Pune municipal corporation which had sanctioned a 20 lakh project for the de-silting of the lake has blinked: it has called off the project and is now pumping water into the lake.

Residents and activists noted that of the 36 quarries identified by the Pune Municipal Corporation, only nine have been preserved as lakes, that most of the 150 nalas (drains) in the city have been cemented over for roads and the five rivers that serve the city have become the dumping ground for sewage that has not been fully treated by the city’s 15 sewage treatment plants.

This lake in particular, they point out, has never run dry since it is fed by underground aquifers. Even in the hottest of summers, it never dries up. The problem, residents of the area point out, is that high rises coming up around it have underground parking and when builders hit water at six feet, they pump it out and release it into the drains!

“They should not be allowed to release water into drains: that water should be pumped back into the lake," they maintain.

The de-silting of the lake is one more symbol of the divergence between citizens, even when they are active and alert, and an apathetic (to put it mildly) civic administration. It aroused people who live across town like Susan Raj, an active member of the Wanawadi Residents Forum, and she was scathing in her comment.

“Beware of LICS (laziness, irresponsibility, corruption and scared of doing the right thing)! Citizens have to be constantly aware and they need to take ownership of their localities and any civic work around them. This is the only way to ensure sustainability and the city suffers when we don’t take ownership! We need to create greater awareness among citizens when civic services are not up to the mark, chasing people whose job it is to provide that service! We are the owners and once we show that with follow up and persistence, the attitude of the civic officials also changes," she said.

The Model Colony/Lakaki Lake shows that when citizens assert their rights, the civic authority has to take note.

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Published: 06 May 2013, 02:04 PM IST
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