Can Hussainsagar be emptied?
Is it possible and viable to dry out Hussainsagar lake, clean it and have it filled with fresh water, as mooted by the Chief Minister, K. Chandrasekhar Rao recently?
Since the idea of emptying the water body during the summer was floated, the possibilities of taking up such an initiative have become a topic of discussion among the administration and experts.
Questions are being raised as to how the water from the lake spread over 1,200 acres and a full tank level of 513.43 metres could be drained out. With a shore length of 14 km, Hussainsagar has two outlets, one near the Marriot Hotel side and another at the Buddha Purnima Project (BPP) office side from which overflow gets released.
The first step would be to ensure that around 50 million litres per day (MLD) that joins the lake is intercepted and diverted which itself could be an onerous task. Experts refusing to be named, point out that assuming if this gets done, the next challenge would be to drain out the water from the lake.
“The two existing outlets are for overflow which means, these have to be dug down to facilitate flow of water from the FTL,” he says.
Though smaller lakes and ponds were dried and refilled in different parts of the world, experts could not recall instances of a main water body of this size and water level being subjected to such an exercise. Even if a facility to let the water out in large quantities was created, it would be passing through densely populated localities before joining river Musi. “This might have its own adverse reactions from residents,” he said.
If indeed taken up, drying up exercise could drag on for years and every time it rains during that period, water would keep accumulating. And then, drying would throw up several lakh square feet of sediment that would prove hard to clean. An official suspect such exposed expanse of sediment could result in stench hard to tolerate in the heart of the city.
“Theoretically it is possible, but practical issues that will confront us are hard to assess,” said an official. The ecological impacts too were not easy to estimate before hand, he added.
