Last year on 2nd Feb 2015, for the first time in the history of Dipor bil, the fishermen cooperative called Panch Para Samabay Samiti, PPSS and South Asian Forum for Environment, SAFE, jointly observed World Wetlands Day with the participation of over 2000 fishermen, who joined hands with volunteers, students, activists to sensitize the locals on “Save Dipor bill’.
The Dipor Bil is heavily infested with water hyacinth, besides emergent weeds such as Hydrilla, Nymphaea, etc., indicating that the entire beel suffers high eutrophication (high nutrient load) due to the inflow of enormous quantity of the untreated Guwahati city sewage and other inorganic industrial effluents, and agriculture wastes.
The highly acidic condition of the water of Dipor Bil could be due to high level of putrification,( decay) due to increase levels of pollution. Decades of neglect, have damaged the ecological health of an important wetlands like Dipor bil, designated as Ramsar site in year 2002.
Dipor bill cleaning drive was started on 2nd Feb 2015, and in November 2015 we can see that enormous amount of weed, plastics, excess hyacinth has been removed successfully, leaving the wetlands clean and has reduced the increased levels of purification in the water.
The PPSS and SAFE appreciates the massive effort taken by the fishers community, and we gratefully thank Environment & Forest Department, Assam, Guwahati Municipal Corporation for the immense support extended in cleaning the Dipor bill.
