Local organisations, farmers and campaigners will gather today before the office of the District Collector, West Godavari at Eluru demanding the removal of the fish tanks and seeking compensation from them for the loss of crops amounting to an estimated Rs.150 crores.
The original 900 sq. km. of the lake has been choked by the construction of dams upstream and reduced to a mere 300 sq. km. The outlet to the sea at Upputeru was widened and later ‘Upputeru straight cut', an artificial channel into the sea was excavated. This has drastically reduced the level of water in the lake. Following the notification and demonstrations by various organisations in 1999, the High Court demanded the removal of all encroachments and restoration of the lake. This took into account the regulation of effluent flow into the lake by adhering to the central Ministry of Environment and Forests. And that no pisciculture/ aquaculture/ shrimp culture be permitted within the Lake. Illegal fish tanks are the biggest threat to Kolleru; poor fisherfolk are used by large industrialists to dig and operate tanks in the lake bed.
Aside from the birdlife and natural fish fauna of Lake Kolleru, at stake are also the livelihoods of hundreds of small and marginal farmers, mostly from the backward classes. Over 150,000 acres of farmland has been inundated directly as a result of the flow of water being impeded by the construction of illegal fish tanks within the lake bed and even across the major deep water channels that lead water out of the Lake into the Upputeru channel and the Bay of Bengal.
