Integrated Water Hyacinth Control and Waste Management Plan: A Case of Futala Lake, Nagpur

Abstract

Water hyacinth belongs to family Pontederiaceae and is a very remarkable and rapidly growing angiospermic plant, generally found in the freshwater bodies. Cost-effective and efficient control of water hyacinth growth and managing its resources is a challenge in most places where the problem has occurred. The present study identifies the effluents from upstream of surrounding area, immersion of idols of Gods during festivals and dumping of domestic garbage as the principal reasons for the growth of water hyacinth in Futala Lake, Nagpur, and proposes an integrated management plan to control the water hyacinth growth and eliminate the municipal solid waste being dumped in the lake at its source. Various studies have determined that besides having pernicious and inimical characteristics, water hyacinth is a remarkable source of biomass and hence makes good organic compost. The study compares the effectiveness of the mechanical, environmental, chemical and biological water hyacinth control methods in conjunction with other waste-to-compost and waste-to-energy technologies in terms of volume reduction, ease of operations, restrictions and conservations on type of waste processing, quality of compost, odour control, ease of organizing human resources, financial feasibility and uses the technology-specific emission factors in conjunction with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change methodologies to determine the annual greenhouse gas (CO2 eq.) emissions from them. The proposed integrated plan uses the inferences obtained from comparing the technical, financial and operational feasibility of applying different water hyacinth control methods in Futala Lake to make one integrated water hyacinth control and management plan and explains the stepwise procedure to eliminate the water hyacinth problem and control the wild dumps of municipal solid wastes near the lake by using waste-to-compost machines working on the principle of thermophilic decomposition. Thus, with respect to the analysis of the efficiency and effectiveness of the proposed management and control plan for Futala Lake, the study proposes that similar plans could be used to check the growth of water hyacinth in any freshwater body.