Damdama Lake restoration work to start by end of January

The district administration is planning to start the ground study for restoration of Damdama lake by the end of this month after it signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the team of Namami Gange, which will provide the technical support for the project, said officials on Friday

The district administration is planning to start the ground study for restoration of Damdama lake by the end of this month after it signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the team of Namami Gange, which will provide the technical support for the project, said officials on Friday.

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The Namami Gange is a flagship programme of the Union government launched to accomplish the twin objectives of effective abatement of pollution, conservation and rejuvenation of Ganga

Officials said the project will be undertaken in two phases. First, a pre-study will be conducted to understand the history of the lake where in the hydrological aspects, such as contour level, quality and level of ground water, catchment area, among other aspects will be taken into consideration. The second phase will be implementation of the results of the pre-study with the technical support from the Namami Gange team.

Osho Kalia, a senior member from GuruJal (the district administration’s water management team) who is working on the project, said, “Our main aim is to ensure that the waterbody becomes a perennial lake. Currently, water is available in the lake only for a few months after monsoon. We are likely to sign an MoU with different agencies by the end of this month and start the pre-study, which we are aiming to complete by the end of this year.”

Spread across 75 acres, Damdama lake acts as a natural water reservoir in Sohna and is one of the biggest lakes in Haryana. It is the last surviving natural lake of Delhi-NCR.

Vaishali Rana, a city based environmentalist, said, “Damdama lake is one of the most crucial lakes for ground water recharge in Gurugram and a source of water for wildlife in the Aravallis. With encroachment and deforestation in the catchment area of the lake, it has been reduced to one third of what it used to be earlier. The restoration of the lake is every important from both a wildlife perspective and for the increasing population of Gurugram.”

In the third week of December last year, the district administration conducted a meeting with all stakeholders of the project and set a target of the coming monsoon for the restoration of the lake.

Yash Garg, deputy commissioner of Gurugram, had said before starting the restoration work, it was important to study other important aspects, such as geographical location.