Deepor beel gasping for survival Sivasish thakur GUWAHATI, Nov 6 – It is a bird sanctuary and the State’s lone Ramsar Site but the prevailing conditions belie its stature as a wetland of immense significance. Deepor beel, located within the city’s municipal limits, is reeling under the onslaught of unbridled urbanization and human greed. Add to it insensitive and unresponsive authorities, and the days of the wetland seem numbered.
Continued discharge of the city’s untreated sewerage through the Bahini and Bharalu rivers as also the dumping of municipal solid waste in its close proximity by the Guwahati Municipal Corporation (GMC) have raised the wetland’s pollution to alarming levels.
Even within the beel’s core protected area (which forms the sanctuary), the water is blackish and covered by a coat of oily substance over a large stretch. Invasive weeds such as water hyacinth have expanded to more and more areas.
Other persisting problems like large-scale encroachment, heavy siltation from the denuded hills surrounding the beel, increasing industrial activities within its periphery, a busy railway line along the southern boundary, quarrying and brick-making within the beel ecosystem, etc., remain largely unaddressed.
A Planning Commission team that visited Deepor 7 last year under the National Wetland Conservation Management Programme of the Union Ministry of Environment and Forests had cited all these factors as jeopardizing the wetland’s survival, and recommended strong corrective measures by the State Government and the administration. While the Assam Science Technology and Environment Council (ASTEC) is doing some restoration work, a number of concerns including disposal of municipal wastes at a nearby ground and sewerage discharge into the beel are only worsening.
The Planning Commission team, in its report, had also noted that notwithstanding a few initiatives by ASTEC with funding from the Centre and the State Government, “a lot remains to be done for at least partial restoration of this wetland.” It also pulled up the ASTEC for slow implementation, saying that “the ASTEC could not use the funds judiciously and hence at the end of every financial year at least 30-50 per cent of the funds released were remaining unutilized.”
The Pollution Control Board Assam (PCBA) had recently gave some more time to the Ramki group engaged by the GMC to dispose the city’s garbage in compliance with municipal solid wastes rules, failing which the PCBA warned of stern action. Similarly, the GMC had also been told to find an alternative disposal site long back but to no avail.
Forest Department sources said that following the declaration of a part (4.14 sq km) of the wetland as a sanctuary, some security measures including checking of fishing within the protected area had been initiated.
“Regarding pollution, we have regularly been taking up the matter with the district administration and other departments and agencies concerned. But things at ground level have not progressed much,” SK Silsharma, DFO, Guwahati Wildlife Division, said.
Conservation circles have called for an integrated approach to save Deepor, which should include – besides checking industrial activities and minimizing anthropogenic pressures — protecting the green cover on the city’s hills as widespread deforestation in the hills led to accumulation of huge deposits of earth and silt on the beel bed.
A natural wetland, Deepor harbours a rich variety of flora and fauna including 212 species of birds - many of them endangered. Also well-known for its indigenous fish diversity with 50 species recorded so far, Deepor is the only major storm water storage basin for Guwahati, which invariably faces prolonged waterlogging during every monsoon. Deepor, again, is the best indicator of the city’s environmental status, and lesser number of birds visiting the wetland would testify to the growing transformation of the city into a quagmire of pollution.
Deepor offers prospects for tourism as well but this has to be harnessed carefully without impacting its fragile ecology. With the dense Garbhanga hills proving a stunning backdrop, Deepor can be developed as an ideal destination.
The insensitivity of the administration and the State Government should be evident from the shabby treatment meted out to this premier wetland over the years. Rather than checking anthropogenic and industrial pressures on its periphery, the authorities had issued land pattas to many settlers besides allowing industrial activities within the beel precincts.
