Did you know there were 70 lakes in Mumbai but 67 of them are found surrounded with vegetation? Or that 53 per cent of lakes are encroached upon by local residents, of which 21 per cent is handed over to builders and about 26 per cent to government agencies.
All these facts and much more is a part of a 30 page-draft report called The Lakes of Mumbai prepared by five experts of the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) for Nature, India, and released on the World Water Day on Sunday.
The baseline data for the study was prepared with the help of Google Earth website. The areas appearing to be lakes were first marked on the Google Earth images, verified by the field staff after conducting onsite visits, said Goldin Quadros, interim state director of WWF India. The survey was conducted during September and October 2008 and March 2009.
According to Quadros, In the present scenario where rains have been delayed and most of Maharashtra has been declared drought prone, Mumbai will have to reduce its dependency on the adjacent district for its water requirements. The civic authorities will need to work towards cleaning up the existing lakes and encourage the adjacent dwellers to use and manage the ecosystems sustainably. In our course of research, we realized a tremendous lacuna people only know Tulsi, Powai and Vihar lakes. Everything else is easily exploited, dumped or encroached upon.
The report states that data covering visible aspects related to the lakes were collected during field visits. The sites which were identified as lakes were revisited in March to check for the seasonality and water levels.
The draft study observed: 129 sites were identified as potential lakes from Google Earth information and verified. Seventy lakes were recorded from Mumbai including the western and central suburbs, whereas 17 sites were inaccessible. During the survey, 11 lakes were recorded which were not observed in Google Earth. While surveying these lakes in March, we came across four additional lakes where were not documented during our first visit. Another major observation the study made was that two of the lakes recorded during monsoon were completely reclaimed by March.
Quadros said, What we released on Sunday is a draft. We plan to access the 17 sites that we couldnt access this time around, before completion of the final report.