After years of gap we the Udaipurites celebrated our ‘Hariyali Amavasya’ this year with both our lakes overflowing with added charm to our favorite festival. Our lakes are also sources of our life line with daily supply of our requirements for drinking and other uses.

We are very thankful to some of our conscious citizens who have been struggling for years to keep our lakes clean and their environs pollution free and their surroundings free of encroachments. Let us admire their efforts and conserve water in these lakes by a need based mentality and not waste water at any cost.

But what seems to be overlooked is to take care of depths of our lakes in addition to taking action to keep their up streams and down streams clean and environment friendly.

The water carrying capacities of lakes depend much on its designed depths because their surface boundaries have been fixed by solid structures.

Years of collections of silt, sand and pebbles along with garbage dumped through fast flow of sources of supplies like catchment areas, dams and canals keep on filling at the bottoms of our lakes. These result not only in polluting our lakes but reducing its depths and hence their filling capacities. Lakes with fewer depths become gradually shallow and will fill earlier than its designed capacities and will start over flowing. The recent one day one night filling and over flow of Pichola Lake gives both glee and concern.

The government agencies must pay attention to this aspect. Periodic hydrographic surveys will indicate loss of depths and when these survey contours indicate alarming decrease in depths Dredging operations must be under taken to bring back the depths to its required designed depths. The dredged out material will clear the lakes of garbage and the sand-soil mixture may be gainfully used for gardens and parks.

In view of the fact that our lakes are going to be kept full because of continuous supplies from completion of Devas Projects this factor of depth depletion assumed more importance. The occasional manual dry dredging of a small portion of lake areas will also not be possible. There will arise the need to employ self propelled pontoon dredgers with adequate capacities to undertake dredging on regular basis.

There are innumerable lakes and water reservoirs in our geographical zone and if this exercise is employed judiciously we will be able to conserve a vast wastage of precious water on one hand and clearing these reservoirs of garbage.

Is it not a point to take note of!