How to kill a wetland, India style

Water bodies and wetlands in the heart of the city are rare and need to be preserved. That’s exactly what we don’t do and try to milk whatever we can at any cost, even at the cost of the existence of the wetland. That is what I have learnt and witnessed in last more than 20 years, and that too in the National Capital.

Sanjay lake was conceived and developed in 1970s and was opened in 1982 by the DDA. It is everyone’s guess that whom it was named after. 

Sanjay Lake has been dear to me, as I have been living around it for almost 25 years now. My life has grown with this lake being witness to it. It has been part of my morning walk and fitness schedule and it also had been a playground for my naïve photo instincts. The transformation of this lake has been very painful for me. My romance with this wetland started when it used to remain packed with locals coming to have evening boat rides, paddling themselves into small coziness of the shallow lake. 

The problems of usual upkeep were always there, as are normal with almost all water bodies under callous administrations, such as- encroachments, spread of water hyacinth, other weeds, poor maintenance, fishing, cattle grazing, garbage left by picnickers, open defecation, etc. But despite all the wetland survived. Sanjay Lake also has an in-house breeding programme for ducks and ducks are being supplied to other DDA parks in capital from here on the regular basis. They have always been an added attraction here.

I have been coming to this lake regularly since 2000 and have been seriously documenting it since 2012-13. I had done a blog post on its upkeep way back in March, 2016 – Milking a lake and killing it too!

Clearly, the problems for this wetland had already started by then.

First of the many problems was the site for metro station of the to be laid down pink line of Delhi Metro. Construction started in 2015 and the site of the station was exactly where migratory Great Egrets used to have their colony in the winters. Once the construction started, Great Egrets stopped coming there. It was the first of the major casualty for the bird lovers.

Almost at the same time, the wider and slightly deeper part of the lake was all of a sudden given by the local administration to a fishing contractor on lease. Lake was already rich in fishes, there was no need of seeding but the contractor was handed over the large part of the lake for fish farming. So, effectively the contractor got the control of water body where all migratory birds used to come for wintering. Fishes and insects in the lake are the primary source of food for these birds, but why would the fishing contractor let birds eat the fishes which he would farm and catch for quick money in the fish market. So, the migratory birds became his enemy. He deployed a team of his workers who will take the boats and take rounds inside lake and won’t let birds hover and sit in the marshy areas. Bird population took a hit again.

And, sometime back- probably a year ago- the middle part of the lake was given to an adventure park operator (EoD) in partnership with Delhi Tourism for running an adventure park as well as water sports, boating activities. 

So, effectively lake got divided in three parts. First part close to Patparganj entrance and upto very old hanging bridge remained with Delhi Development Authority (DDA) which had given Delhi Tourism rights for boating in the lake. Delhi Tourism has been operating boating in that part since very long. Second part of the lake alongside the adventure park was handed over to the EoD operator to run their own water sports activities and boating. Third and the biggest part of the lake on the farther end towards Khichdipur went to the fishing contractor. None of them ever had any interest in preserving the wetland. 

In coming years, the fishing lease expired and was not renewed for whatever reasons. Hence, the birds got the lifeline. Adventure park kept hosting school picnics but somehow couldn’t manage to become a crowd puller, and was not able to do any considerable damage to the local ecosystem. Delhi Tourism’s experiments with boating kept failing as they were never able to maintain either the boats or the lake in the shape good enough to please people.

But the real problems started post-covid. 

Irony with administrators is that they hardly know where to use the resources. They go by their whims which are often illogical. I have seen too many things in all these years at this lake- laying and relaying of walkways when never was needed, too much of construction, useless landscaping, concrete structures spoiling the natural surroundings, constructing guard posts which have never been used, building food courts never to be finished and ultimately razing down completely, and lot more. Many big corporates will occasionally, obligated by their CSR initiatives, launch plantation drives just for photo-ops and nothing else. 

In 2020, in name of restoration again an amphitheatre and few other structures were created. Never seen any use of them.

But few foolish decisions in 2022 were responsible for destroying his place as a wetland altogether and perhaps for ever. It had lot to do with the administrative tussle between the elected Delhi Government and the centre-appointed Lieutenant Governor of Delhi. In May 2022 Vinai Kumar Saxena was appointed as Lt Governor of Delhi and he is still there.

Ironically, that was the same year when Sanjay Lake was to be designated as National Capital’s first wetland and nomination for it to be included in Ramsar sites was ready to be send.

That year, Delhi Jal Board (DJB) was given the contract for desilting of Sanjay Lake—spread in 52 acres—and, responsibility of rejuvenating and maintaining it. DJB was also supposed to lay a pipeline from its Kondli sewage treatment plant to fill the lake and maintain water levels. Nobody thought for a once that the STP water is not recommended for wetlands as it is not good for fishes and, hence for birds.

So far so good, but here came the twist. Somehow, the Lt. Governor got an idea that alongwith desilting, the depth of the lake should also be increased. It was disastrous idea for a wetland. He wasn’t satisfied with that. On a further visit to the lake in April last year, he ordered to increase the depth further, compounding the disaster. 

So, to complete this task, lake-bed was completely dried up and JCBs were used to dig it up. By end of summer last year, there was not even a single drop left in the lake. For people like me, this was painful to see the lake in this state for the very first time. Lake was supposed to be refilled by using pipelines to fetch the water from Kondli STP of the DJB.

Not a single thought was given to the fact that what would happen to all the domestic birds and other animals who depend on lake water for their water as well as food.

LG’s idea was that once deepened by 2.5 meters, this lake will be able to hold nearly 53 million litres of water. Dream was that oncoming monsoon will rejuvenate the lake naturally while recharging the ground water simultaneously. But it never happened. Lake bed remained dry during the monsoon and the following winter. Thus the last winter passed without a drop of water in the whole 52 acres area of the lake, so there was no chance of any bird coming this way. So, for the first time, there was no wintering of any birds at the lake. Not just that, all the domestic birds were nowhere to be seen as it had become dry and arid zone. Effectively, an ecosystem that was built here in many decades was simply chopped off.

It has been almost a year since the lake bed has dried up. 

In February this year trial was done to check the pipelines for bringing water to lake and pipelines were not able to hold the pressure and kept bursting at many points. Just a couple of days back water started reaching back to the lake from the STP plant. In coming weeks or months, lake might be filled again but is it the end of the story?

No.

For LG and his team, it might be operation successful, but it actually is not.

Let’s go back and see the things in logical light. There are many things told by sources and persons close to decisions which they have shared on condition of not disclosing heir identities. 

Completely drying up the lake also had an impact on surrounding over 170 acres of green area, which is also designated as notified forest area. As, I already told that no thought was given on the ecosystem dependent on the lake water, the dried up lakebed also meant that there was drop in ground-water level as well. It also didn’t augur well for the green area around lake as it stopped getting water from lake through its natural seepage. For months altogether only the area surrounding the DDA office at the entrance used to get water through tubewell for irrigating the landscaping. All other regions of the park were left unattended, as there was nothing the horticulture team could have done in the absence of water in lake and drop in ground water level.

Interestingly, as the part of the renovation, couple of drains were also constructed to connect the lake with the NH24. 

Why? 

Few of us might be remembering that the part of Meerut Expressway running parallel to the park has some serious design flaws, due to which during heavy rains, lower sub-lanes on both sides of Expressway would get flooded as there was no drainage system along the road. So, probably it was thought that the water can be drained into the Sanjay Lake. It would have served dual purpose- brought water to lake and saved expressway from flooding.

LG has some other ideas as well. Sources say that he wanted to give this lake to coastguard to run water sports activities in the lake. It was due to this idea, that lake was given more depth. But coastguard ultimately refused to take the bait as they found the lake flow narrower than their requirements. So, the whole purpose of digging up the lake is now lost. 

There was no point in increasing the carrying capacity of the lake, as this water has no other use. 

But the deep lake has created other big problems. DJB personnel say that the depth of the lake is now between 3.5 to 4 metres. Foolishly, lakebed was not reconstructed in a slope, but it has been dug right from the bank itself, thus its depth goes beyond couple of metres, right at the boundary itself. 

Effectively, it now leaves no marshy area and thus it is a wetland no more. Bird lovers know that most of the aquatic avian species- storks, herons, egrets, moorhens, etc use marshy areas of wetlands to stand in the water and catch the prey. They don’t go in deep waters. But, with such depth everywhere, they will have no area to stand. Even the other birds cormorants, shovelers, mallards, ducks, will be coming only if there is enough prey available. There are already doubts in the minds of forest guys about fish growth in STP water. 

Thus, the lake which was just a few years back a contender of being designated as a Ramsar site, was supposed to be the first water body in National Capital to get the wetland tag, is now effectively not a wetland anymore. I was told that the horticulture and forest officials were always against this idea of digging up the lake, but DJB never took a NOC from them to go ahead. They were overruled by the LG and his team. Ironically the forest and conservation officer at the helm of the horticulture department in charge has now been replaced by an IPS officer. So, we can clearly look at the priorities.

There are other inherent dangers of the depth, which were already visible even when just a couple of feet of water has reached last week in few low areas of the lake. Local children from surrounding colonies were swimming and bathing in the lake, jumping in and out- as they used to do earlier as well. But, as soon as more water reaches lake and it gets close to its optimum level, lake will have a frightening depth for a water body situated so close to residential areas. With porous boundaries of the park area, there is effectively no way to completely stop people from taking a dip in the lake. With a depth of over 10-11 feet, how accident prone and life-threatening it would be!

It is a very misplaced idea of beautification and development that our current system is trapped into, despite very clear visible signs of climate change around us. We are hellbent to kill whatever lifelines we have around us. Sanjay Lake is an example of that. 

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