Kashmir's Lake Dal gently weeps
By Haroon Mirani

SRINAGAR - For more than a century, stunning Dal Lake has been the resplendent jewel of Kashmir's tourism trade. Enshrined beneath glacially serrated Himalayan peaks and encircled by blossoming orchards and tulip gardens, its idyllic beauty is legendary.

The late George Harrison, guitarist for the Beatles, and Bengali sitar maestro Ravi Shankar once strummed their strings on its shores. British comedian Michael Palin, of Monty Python fame, Academy Award winning actress Joan Fontaine and former United States vice president Nelson A Rockefeller all vacationed by the peaceful waters.

Dal Lake, located in Srinagar, the summer capital of the northernmost India-administered state of Jammu and Kashmir, has also been a favorite of India's own rich and famous, including

 

musician Zubin Mehta and three generations of India's powerful Gandhi family, to name just a few. (Last year, Congress party leader Sonia Gandhi presided over the harvest of Dal Lake's tulip plantation - the largest of its kind in Asia.)

A scenic, tree-shrouded boulevard winds its way along the shore, lined with parks, monuments and Moghul gardens planted in the 16th and 17th centuries. Overlooking the lake are the historic Shankaracharya and Hari Parbat temples.

Dal Lake is also famous for its Victorian-era houseboats originally built as vacation homes for British administrators during the Raj. Aboard these buoyed getaways or the gondola-like shakiras, which serve as the lake's water taxis, visitors can glide through innumerable floating gardens - yet another reason why Dal Lake is the most-photographed lake in India.

But there is another picture that isn't so pretty. Environmentalists say Dal Lake is dying a slow death, with rampant pollution, urbanization on its banks, and the blockage of fresh water channels and natural springs spoiling its once-pristine waters.

Dal Lake - once described as "the most beautiful lake in India" - now figures among the 100 most polluted lakes in the world. In the past 20 years, the lake has shrunk from 25 square kilometers to 11 sq km, and its depth has decreased by four meters.

More recently, Dal Lake has become a battleground between environmental groups concerned with the lakes' conservation and locals who depend solely on the tourist trade. Floating precariously at the very center of this roiling dispute are Dal Lake's famous houseboats.

Environmental broadsides
Hand-carved cedar houseboats were first introduced in Dal Lake by the British as early as 1888. At the time, British troops stationed in present-day Pakistan escaped the scorching lowland summers in cooler Kashmir. The beloved houseboats - many with incongruous monikers such as The Buckingham Palace, Mona Lisa and Helen of Troy - soon become symbolic of "the Kashmir holiday", and staying in one was considered a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

In recent times, however, the houseboats have been singled out for the worsening condition of Dal Lake. About 1,200 houseboats are moored year-round at Dal Lake and their raw sewage goes directly into the water. Local officials claim that roughly 100,000 liters of untreated human waste enter the lake from the houseboats each day.

Although the construction of new houseboats stopped in 1991, the existent boats continue to operate without any change of design. Now, in what they claim is a bid to save famous Dal Lake from extinction, authorities in India-administered Kashmir have ordered a ban on the houseboats moored in its waters.

The state high court, which has been hearing the case, has given the option of installing a US$4,000 sewage treatment device, but houseboat owners say they don't have the financial means as two decades of violent insurgency in Kashmir have dried up the tourist dollars.

Meanwhile, houseboat owners deny the officials' claim that they are the primary cause of pollution.

"Houseboats contribute to just 3% of Dal pollution and there are other reasons for the present condition, which the authorities are overlooking," Azim Tuman, president Houseboat Owners Association, told Asia Times Online. "A large amount of city sewage still goes into the lake untreated and the water circulation system though different canals in the city has been blocked resulting in stale condition of Dal waters."

Some experts agree that the main problem is the unhindered flow of sewage into Dal Lake's waters from nearby Srinagar - a city of some 1.3 million residents. The government has established three Sewage Treatment Plants (STPs) to stop unchecked flow of sewage in the Dal waters. Environmentalists, however, say a system of about a dozen big and small STPs is needed to completely check the seepage.

Rocking the boats
Sewage discharged into the lake results in a process called "eutrophication" which causes aquatic weed growth, damages local flora and fauna and results in the clogging of fresh water arteries.

Four fresh water channels feeding Dal Lake have been blocked due to unplanned urbanization of Srinagar city. Despite a ban on littering in the lake, most of its 700 natural springs have been choked by polythene and other industrial wastes.

Government corruption and inefficiency have also been blamed for the lake's present condition. According to reports, millions of dollars are being spent on Dal Lake's conservation, but locals allege that only a fraction of the amount is actually put to its intended use.

Despite receiving monetary compensation, some 60,000 people residing inside Dal Lake on reclaimed land are yet to be relocated.

The lake is a major source of drinking water for Srinagar, supplying about 40% of city's population. Lately, there has been an alarming increase in the detection of deadly elements such as arsenic, cadmium, manganese, copper, lead, nickel in the lake basin - posing a grave threat to any living thing that consumes the water. There are often reports of people in Srinagar becoming ill after consuming water supplied from water filtration plants from the lake.

The lake's aquatic life has already been hit. Fishing, the area's second-biggest industry after tourism, has seen a rash of unemployment due to the decreased in fish population in the lake.
Even today, as the government attempts to stop the discharge of 100,000 liters of sewage per day from houseboats into the lake per day, millions of liters of sewage from other sources go unhindered. Environmentalists say that if real action is not taken, Kashmir's glistening Dal Lake lake will be gone in 50 years.

Haroon Mirani is a Kashmir-based journalist.

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