HYDERABAD, June 15: The water pollution crisis could have been averted had the Water and Sanitation Agency cleared the silt in its two lagoons over the years and stored water to the capacity , Wasa Managing-Director Habibur Rehman admitted on Tuesday.
One lagoon is lying empty and there is a massive growth of wild bushes. The other lagoon too is almost empty and buffaloes use its water for bathing without any check. Since there is no fencing over embankments, animals find easy access to the lagoons.
Sources in the Hyderabad Development Authority said the lagoons had been lying empty for several years. The north and south lagoons have a total capacity of 400 million gallons per day (MGD).
The purpose of the lagoons is to store water lifted from the River Indus at the Kotri Barrage through pumping machines. However, an engineer of Wasa said that in case of emergency up to 600 million gallons of water could be stored if silt in the tanks was cleared.
He said a gap of three feet had been left to create room for settling of silt and two feet on top surface had also been left. He said the five feet capacity could be used in emergency.
HDA sources said water works of Paretabad, Hala Naka and Latifabad-4 could store 45, 36 and five MGD, respectively. Unfiltered water is being supplied to residents from these water works and there is no other treatment plant. However, Wasa claims that it supplies 60 MGD of water to the city, of which 40 MGD is filtered and 20 MGD is unfiltered. Wasa sources said the two lagoons were supposed to supply 80 per cent of water to the city and meet its needs for 10 to 12 days.
They said the city was supplied water during the closure of the River Indus for 15 days every year because of the huge storage capacity. The lagoons, if properly used, mad filtration process easier because turbidity settled there before water being filtered in the treatment plant, they said.
Had these lagoons been cleared of silt water could have been stored for 15 days in order to face any such crisis. Such a crisis could have been averted if water was stored to capacity in the lagoons, the Wasa MD admitted.
The Wasa authorities have planned to initiate desilting of the lagoons, for which tenders are about to be floated through newspapers. The work is part of the schemes planned through a Rs120 million grant announced by Sindh Governor Dr Ishratul Ibad Khan.
Earlier, the repair of Wasa's filter and desilting of lagoons was a part of the Rs500 million governor's package. It is also envisaged in the Rs10.5 billion Hyderabad Development Package.
The provincial and the district government's have been involved in a row over the control of the Hyderabad Development Authority and Wasa since the HDA Act 1976 was repealed after the promulgation of the Sindh Local Government Ordinance 2001. Recently, the directed the chief secretary to issue a notification about the issue but it is still awaited.