If only the silt from its surroundings keeps on depositing in Dal Lake on the current rate, this famous water body of Kashmir will take another 346 years to disappear. And siltation of the lake bed is only one small reason for the death of the Dal.

According to the Detailed Project Report (DPR) for the Conservation and Management of Dal-Nagin Lakes prepared by the Alternate Hydro Energy Centre of the University of Roorkee, the experts had conducted Radiometric Dating Technique and estimated the life expectancy of the lake at 355 years based on the siltation and sedimentation of the lake bed from its catchment area. And nine years have already passed since this elaborate report was submitted to the J-K government only to be ignored by the babus.

In 2000, the Union Ministry of Environment and Forests assigned the job of preparing a DPR as a step towards saving the Dal-Nagin Lakes. The report had various components like the sewerage and sewage treatment, solid waste management, relocation and rehabilitation of lake dwellers, catchment management plan including others. It has an elaborate chapter on each of these components and had a separate chapter on the proposed interventions.

“According to the assessment, the annual soil loss to the Dal Lake works out to be 61,000 tones per year which is equivalent to 2.7 milimetres per year uniformly spread in the Dal Lake,’’ the report’s Catchment Management segment says. “This works out the expected life of Dal Lake to be 355 years’’.

... contd.