Know Your Lakes

India is a rain fed country which is completely dependent on its four months of monsoon to survive the whole year, different parts of the country get washed with rain at different times. The journey in tracking India’s monsoon begins with the Southwest Monsoon and ends with the Northeast cyclones. The country’s rivers, lakes, ponds and oceans are fed by troughs and rains.

The nation’s populations on 1.3 billion depend on these lakes and rivers for survival. However, with increasing greed for land and sand mining many of India’s rivers and lakes exist only on maps today. Nature takes years to alter topography, but corrupt practices with heavy machinery changes the course of the river in no time. The long term impact of the same is still not understood by the common man who is voiceless and helpless.

Today, there is a water war within the country between the states, soon this will become an international affair. The fact that we are always dependent on external sources for water is worrying, if we started conserving and protecting our own water soon there will be no need to seek alms elsewhere.

For the sake of industrialization, various water bodies have been dried up and converted into economic zones. What we don’t understand is that, we are very dependent on nature for every single aspect of our living. Unless we do not show are for Mother Nature, we cannot continue reaping benefits from her. Studies show that nowadays industries consume more water compared to farmers, who are majorly dependent on these water bodies. Most ‘indusry experts’ fail to understand this, and believe that money is the solution to all problems. Slowly, we are depleting our existing water resources, and soon we’ll be leaving in a dry land thirsty and poorer than we are today.

Water bodies aren’t a magic pot that keeping giving us unlimited supply of water, which we greedily use to destroy it. We have to understand the importance of conserving it. It’s now or never. We have to focus on inclusive and sustainable development programs, to save these resources. Water as a resource is for all life forms to share, just because we can walk straight and talk loud it gives us no authority to control all of nature’s resources.

We at Environmentalist Foundation of India (EFI) organize and execute effective lake cleanup programs in India. Under this program the organization adopts a beach, lake or any water body on a voluntary basis. The water body or beach with its periphery are cleaned, strengthened & restored to its original capacity & beauty. The cleaning process involves a massive removal of physical garbage from the premises. This is followed by scientific lab testing of the water samples repeatedly to check the contaminants and pollutant levels. Post scientific study, the lake bed is de-silted and the silt is deposited on the bunds and a major bund strengthening program follows soon. The leveled bund is now planted with native species saplings which offer extra support to the bund. A small wetland is created towards one corner of the lake to filter out the incoming waste. These wetlands act as the substrate filters, plants like water hyacinths are grown under supervision in this part of the lake alone to ensure filtration. For the beaches repeated nature walks and awareness drives are organized to ensure cleaner environments. If you are worried about a beach, lake, pond or river in your neighborhood, we together can restore the lake to its true natural beauty.

Here we will be discussing about various lakes of India and how to maintain them.

The list of lakes are as follows;

Chennai:
·         Keezhkattalai
·         Narayanapuram
·         Nanmangalam
·         Perumbakkam
·         Arasankazhani
·         Madambakkam
·         Irimbuliyur
·         Mudichur

Hyderabad:
·         Kapra
·         Hafeezpet
·         Gurunadham Cheruvu
·         Alwal

Coimbatore:
·         Selvachintamani Kulam
·         Kurichi
·         Ukkadam
·         Perur

Others:
·         Mariamman koil lake- Tanjore
·         Retteri- Pondicherry
·         Chattrareddiarpatti- Virudunagar