Overflowing Sewage Raises a Stink at Durgam Cheruvu

A view of the drainage overflowing at Durgam Cheruvu, in the park area in Hyderabad.
| Photo Credit: NAGARA GOPAL

The joy of entering the ticketed Durgam Cheruvu Park for free disappears quickly. “Chee. Let’s get out,” says a young girl to her friends as they try to dodge the smelly sludge strewn on the pathway. “I went to the park on Tuesday and the entry was free. I was surprised and was told it was because there was overflowing sewage inside the park. I was shocked with the sewage bubbling out of the manhole. This is no way to maintain a park,” said Sandeep Raj, a real estate consultant who visits the park regularly.

Within a few minutes of entering the park, the overpowering stench of sewage hits the visitor like a gut punch. The stench is not just of the lake but from the sewage that is currently overflowing over the walking track before entering the lake. “It has been like this for the past one month and we stopped collecting fares from visitors. Till the parallel sewerage line is ready, this will remain like this,” says a park attendant pointing to the road on the other side of the Durgam Cheruvu Park.

The Durgam Cheruvu Park has been a showpiece of lake reclamation project by various civic bodies of Hyderabad which has laid 900 mm sewerage pipelines, 2.2 km walking tracks of nine-metres width, pond for immersion of idols, and recreation spaces.

“The sewerage pipeline that goes around the lake got blocked and that’s why there is an overflow,” says a worker attached to the Sewage Treatment Plant (STP). The sanitation workers have created a workaround with the sewerage being let into the STP along with the lake water for processing. “The pipeline taking the sewage around the lake got blocked leading to flooding of the park. Now the water is being let into the STP for treatment,” says a worker at the site where the foul sewage of the surrounding colonies roars through the pipeline and mixes with the bright green sludge of the Durgam Cheruvu water.

The Telangana State Pollution Board identified a nala on the northern side of lake as the source of sewage flowing into it. It also identified six storm water drains, “The only scope for pollution of the lake is due to joining sewage through the nala in the North direction,” it noted. But as the lake sits in a valley surrounded by hillocks, IT companies, residential complexes, and shopping malls, the source of pollution is no longer limited to the nala during monsoon.

The lake park was developed at a cost of Rs. 13 crore under a Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) initiative. The Hyderabad Metropolitan Development Authority mapped the lake in 2014 and estimated its spread at 160.700 acres. The residents of surrounding areas of the lake contend that the lake is only 65 acres. The Telangana State Pollution Control Board estimated the lake to be 83 acres.