Nagpur: As the rains have brought alarming growth of weeds in the city water bodies, Housing and Urban Development Corporation (Hudco) has come up with a noble move. Hudco has expressed its willingness to donate a weed cleaning boat to the Nagpur Municipal Corporation (NMC).
Sources confirmed the development saying that Hudco has expresse interest in donating a weed cleaning boat to the NMC to clean and maintain city’s water bodies.
The NMC has also prepared a detailed project report for Hudco. The city has 13 lakes and the prospect of water hyacinth choking almost 10 water bodies looms large as both the civic authorities — NMC and Nagpur Improvement Trust — have failed to control the weed. Due to lack of corrective measures by the NMC to control pollution, water hyacinth has spread over most water bodies in the city, affecting aquatic life as well as water quality.
The NMC could take two measures to keep the water bodies clean — either by stopping pollution or cleaning the water bodies manually. However, the NMC has taken no measures to stop pollution by letting in sewage water, immersion of idols and dumping of solid waste. For the last couple of years, the NMC had launched a mega awareness drive to save lakes from immersion of idols and dumping of nirmalya.
But as there was no measure to curb sewage water entering the lakes, the effort proved futile. Huge spread of weed has cropped up over Lendi Talao, Naik Talao, Ambazari, Pardi and even Futala lake. As manual cleaning is not conducted regularly, the NMC has failed to de-weed the lakes, admitted a senior official from NMC’s environment section. “The swathes of weed over the water body prevent penetration of sunlight reducing the quality of water.
The decaying vegetative parts too add to the environmental hazards,” he clarified. The ‘special boat’ costs around Rs1.30 crore and Hudco has agreed to donate it to the NMC under its corporate social responsibility. “The NMC has also urged Hudco to maintain the machine for at least seven years, while the civic body has agreed to bear the fuel cost,” he said.
Once the civic body receives the weed cleaning boat, it will prepare a roster on rotation basis to clean the lakes, the official said, adding the NMC will go in for periodical de-weeding of the lakes and it should not be a one-off affair because weeds would grow soon after the de-weeding exercise.
