Six months after the Vellayani Kayal Paristhithi Samrakshana Samithi initiated a campaign to protect the Vellayani Lake, the chairman of the group says he sees a growing understanding of the need to return to using natural fertilizers and put an end to sand-mining. Rufus Daniel, chairman of the Samithi, has urged the State government to take control of the land surrounding the freshwater lake and implement necessary measures for protection of the water body.Mr. Daniel and the Samithi members have urged the government to offer incentives to landowners to sell their land. With control of the land, the government would be able to stop encroachment, construction and the use of chemical fertilizers along the 20-km shore of Vellayani Lake. The decline of the lake began almost 60 years ago with an initiative to plant crops, build an irrigation system by laying mud across the lake and erect pump houses to dewater the area for paddy farming. The government put an end to this cultivation in 1993, due to water shortage, but the lake had already shrunk by one-third of its original size, according to scientists. Use of man-made fertilizers also contaminated the water. "The people who are owners of the plots would like to dewater the lake and cultivate paddy, but they will use chemical fertilizers," said K. Harikrishnan Nair, Dean at the College of Agriculture, Vellayani. "If you want to keep the water, you have to ban paddy cultivation." Illegal sand-mining has also become a threat since the 1990s.
The Hindu, 2nd May 2009
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