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The Mansagar Lake, is a 300-acre lake, surrounded by the Nahargarh hills. The artificial lake was formed as a result of instituting a dam across river Darbhawati during the 18th century. It is today, the only significant water body in the city of Jaipur. Jal Mahal, an architectural monument, is situated in the midst of Mansagar Lake. .
The lake is approximately 130 ha in its full spread. The lake has been a natural habitat for more than 150 species of local and migratory birds. Water provides sustainable living to countless species of the aquatic ecosystem like fish, birds, insects, microorganisms and aquatic vegetation.
The lake suffers from serious problems of siltation and settled deposits, contamination from inflow of wastewater, decrease in surface area due to artificial land formation as a result of eutrophication and loss of water due to the outflow for downstream irrigation during summer. Majority of the sewage is flowing to the lake body untreated and hence there is severe contamination of the ground water in and around the lake area. .
This contamination makes the ground water unfit for drinking and in addition results in a serious health hazard. Moreover, the rainwater mingled with the polluted water of this lake makes it stink. The lake has BOD-20 mg/L and Total nitrogen-20 mg/L.
During the past, several attempts have been made by Government of Rajasthan to restore the ecological and environmental condition of the lake and its adjoining area. However, none of these attempts yielded any positive result because of paucity of funds and non-incentivised approach to take up restoration. India infrastructure and finance services (IL&FS) was entrusted the job of finding a permanent solution to the development requirements of the project in the year 2000. .
It involved a private sector in sustainable development of the project area, and created public-private partnership of the state government and Jal Mahal Resorts Pvt Ltd (JMRPL). A grant of Rs. 24.72 crores was allocated for the restoration under the National River Conservation Program (NRCP), in 2002. JDA (Jaipur development authority) was appointed as the nodal agency for lake restoration part of the project. In 2007, JMRPL took the whole area of the lake (310 acres) and around it (totaling 432 acres) on a 99-year lease from the government of Rajasthan, for restoration.
From 2008 onwards, three wetlands of total 40,000 sqm area are under construction in the vicinity of Jal Mahal (Mansagar Lake) to facilitate fill up the Mansagar Lake with clean water. The sewage water, which is at present routed to the lake, will be diverted into these wetlands. Plans are made to plant algae and water hyacinth to absorb the toxic elements. The clean water will then flow into Mansagar Lake.
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