Bhubaneswar, March 1: Fourteen ponds in the city are in for revamp. The project will cost Rs 27 crore, which the civic body has taken as loan from the Odisha Urban Infrastructure Development Funds.
The Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation gave its go ahead to the proposal to revive the ponds here yesterday.
A senior civic official told The Telegraph that after reviving the water bodies, the corporation would take up pisciculture to repay the loan.
"The civic body has not been able to undertake any beautification or renovation work in water bodies, such as Bindu Sagar, Haja Pokhari and Lakshmi Sagar, as several portions of these lakes have been encroached upon by squatters. Hence, we have decided to move forward and take up other water bodies that can be revived easily," stated the official.
BMC executive engineer Ratindranath Mallik said that seven ponds would be renovated from divisions I and II, respectively.
"The ponds are mainly located on the city outskirts. Some of these ponds are at Balunkeswar, Sadhua, Gadkana and Nilakantha Nagar," Mallik said.
Over the last few years, the municipal corporation has spent crores of rupees for renovation and beautification of various water bodies across the city. However, the renovation efforts failed to deliver any visible result because of opposition from encroachers and other issues.
In the past one decade, the corporation has spent more than Rs 20 crore for renovation of Bindu Sagar at the Old Town area. However, the present scenario of the holy lake depicts a completely different story. Today, the holy lake looks even worse than what it used to look 10 years ago.
"Once, Bhubaneswar had more than 100 small and large water bodies. Over the years, almost half of these have lost their existence to rapid urbanisation. Quite unfortunately, the civic administration has never bothered to chalk out any plan to save the water bodies," said Jayanti Mahapatra, a teacher who lives at Old Town.
Last year, the civic body had earmarked Rs 30 crore to renovate 15 water bodies across the city. The ponds, which were identified for a facelift, include the ones at Lakshmi Sagar, Sundarpada, Aiginia, Baramunda, Kapileswar, Pokhariput, Jagamara, Jadupur, Patia, Gadakana and Rangamatia.
"We have renovated a few water bodies last year. The renovation is still going on. Protests by encroachers and local people are big hurdles in the way of our work," said another official of the corporation.
"The civic body needs revive the water bodies at the earliest. We have lost many trees. Now, we are loosing the water bodies as well. A rapid climate change seems imminent in such a situation," said environmentalist Sailabala Padhi.
