Located in the historic neighbourhood of Mehrauli, is the Hauz-i-Shamsi, a reservoir dating back to 1230 CE. It was built by the third sultan of the Delhi Sultanate, Shamsuddin Iltutmish of what is referred to as the Slave Dynasty.
Every year, this ancient water body stands as a silent witness to the ‘Phool Walon Ki Sair’ festival at the adjoining Jahaz Mahal, which is decorated with fresh flowers to celebrate the Ganga-Jamuni tehzeeb (syncretic Hindu-Muslim culture). For the rest of the year, it brings joy to many people who live around it in homes that stand cheek-by-jowl in the narrow, serpentine lanes of Mehrauli in South Delhi.
“Every morning when I wake up and step out on the balcony of our house, I see the jhilmil [sparkling] water of our Shamsi talab. Sunrays dance on it, which is a beautiful sight,” said Zaida Zehra.
Zaida’s home, where she lives with her husband and two school-going daughters, is in Ward 8, overlooking the lake. She is from Moradabad in Uttar Pradesh and moved to Mehrauli 18 years ago after marriage.
But the waterbody was not always a sight for sore eyes, said Zaida.
Hauz-i-Shamsi (a sunny water tank) is a protected site under the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI). It was constructed to collect rainwater and provide drinking water and respite from the blazing summer heat to the medieval inhabitants of Mehrauli. But over time, it became a dirty, smelly drain filled with garbage and wastewater.
“Until about two years ago, our talab was a breeding ground for mosquitoes, and it was overgrown with weeds. People from our locality used to empty dirty water into it. People bathed their cattle here. We were pained to see its dilapidated condition but didn’t know how to clean up the talab and restore it to its past glory,” said Zaida.
However, Zaida and the other residents of wards 8 and 6 in Mehrauli did not give up on the dream of reviving the Hauz-i-Shamsi and soon joined a multi-stakeholder project to restore the water body.
This happened in early 2023, when the ASI signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with SEEDS (Sustainable Environment and Ecological Development Society) India, a New Delhi-based non-profit, to restore the water tank and the urban ecosystem around it.
As part of the initiative, SEEDS reached out to residents, leading to the birth of Pride of Shamsi, a group of active community members who have since been involved in the restoration and upkeep of the water body. Zaida is an active member of this group.
Read more: Why Bengaluru must preserve and restore its lakes
The five-acre talab now boasts of clean water with six solar-operated aerators that circulate and oxygenate its water. There are floating bio-islands with reeds, the roots of which keep the water clean. The boundary of Hauz-i-Shamsi has been demarcated and fenced. The water body today is a haven for both native and migratory birds.
The participation of the citizenry in such a revival project can be crucial. “In a changing climate, the citizens are the key stakeholders and can help maintain and protect these urban commons in the long term,” said Manu Gupta, Co-founder of SEEDS India.
Reviving Shamsi talab
Mohammad Arif remembers the good old days when he visited his grandmother, who lived near the talab. “As a child, I spent many summer afternoons at Shamsi talab enjoying the cool breeze and watching fishes swim in its waters. Till about 2010, the talab was in a reasonably okay condition. It was also much bigger,” reminisced Arif.
Like Zaida, Arif too now lives in ward no. 8 of Mehrauli, near Hauz-i-Shamsi. According to him, the lake began to shrink when construction picked up around it. “Lots of houses came up in its vicinity, and concretisation affected the flow of rainwater into the tank. Wastewater and sewage started flowing into the talab,” Arif said.
Diverting dirty wastewater and untreated sewage away from the lake was the biggest challenge. In 2021, two years before the signing of the MoU with ASI, SEEDS reached out to various stakeholders — the Municipal Council of Delhi (MCD), Delhi Development Authority (DDA), ASI, councillor, Jal Jeevan Mission, Delhi Jal Board, and local residents like Zaida. Those involved, initiated ground-based assessments to chalk out a restoration plan, which eventually led to the signing of the MoU.
SEEDS India has a SURGE Initiative (SEEDS Urban Resilience, Governance, and Enablement), which focuses on community-driven interventions and innovative solutions to restore urban water bodies across India.
“As part of SURGE, we did a baseline survey of the area and held a series of discussions with community members to identify the challenges around the restoration of Shamsi talab,” said Mitali Vavre, a conservation architect with SEEDS India.
“Thereafter, we carried out a hydro-geophysical assessment of the water body and mapped its catchment. Water quality tests were done to find levels of dissolved oxygen and other key parameters. We found a lot of invasive plant species in the water body. Over a period of a year, untreated effluents flowing into the lake were tapped and diverted,” informed Vavre.
According to Ruchi Bhatt, Project Manager, SEEDS India, “Since Hauz-i-Shamsi is a heritage site, there are regulations around the activities that can be undertaken. Machine excavation of waste and invasive plants from the lake is not allowed and had to be done manually by roping in skilled cleaners. The lake area was demarcated and fenced,” she said.
This was followed by the introduction of bioremediation measures to clean the lake. “These include floating bio-islands, which are constructed wetlands with layers of special aquatic plants to clean the water naturally. Six solar-powered aerators have been installed to enhance water circulation and improve dissolved oxygen levels, contributing to a healthier aquatic ecosystem,” explained Vavre.
To promote community stewardship and build collective ownership of the waterbody, children from the community were involved in raising awareness, and Zaida’s daughters led the campaign.
“While our parents formed the Pride of Shamsi group, we children got together and every weekend held activities, such as drawing, mehandi, and rangoli competitions, centred around our talab,” informed Rojis, the 15-year-old daughter of Zaida. “We also enacted street plays and took out a children’s march through our busy market of Mehrauli, raising slogans to protect our water body,” she added.
A cool solution
Urban water bodies are increasingly being recognised as a key natural infrastructure to cool down cities, according to S. Vishwanath, an urban planner and founder director of Bengaluru-based Biome Environmental Solutions, which has revived several urban and rural lakes in Karnataka.
“Urban lakes have a cooling effect due to evaporation and can help bring down the temperature by 2-4 degrees Celsius around them,” he said. “But two things need to be kept in mind — wind direction, which should not be blocked, and native trees should be planted around the water body to further bring down the temperatures.”
Urban planners are increasingly stressing the role of blue and green infrastructure (BGI), consisting of urban water bodies and trees/gardens. The role of urban water bodies in climate change mitigation and adaptation has also been recorded in a training manual titled Rejuvenation and Conservation of Water Bodies and Open Areas, published by the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs, Government of India. It notes that urban water bodies help combat the urban heat island (UHI) effect and bring down city temperatures.
“Urban lakes create their own microclimate and can help cool our cities. They need to be an integral part of our city’s climate action and heat action plans,” said Gupta, who is a trained urban planner.
Delhi has several water bodies that can be integrated into the city’s heat action plan. According to the Ministry of Jal Shakti’s First Census of Water Bodies conducted in 2021, Delhi has 893 water bodies. There are 525 ponds, 14 lakes, four tanks, and 350 water bodies that are enumerated as ‘others.’ The Census also found that nearly one-fourth of these water bodies (24.19%) were encroached upon, which is the highest among all the states.
The Delhi Heat Action Plan 2024-25 mentions “increasing blue cover” and “restoration of water bodies in Delhi”. But there is a need for a detailed plan for the same because growing scientific evidence globally shows the gains of the same.
A 2024 paper, The Role of Water Bodies in Climate Regulation: Insights from Recent Studies on Urban Heat Island Mitigation, highlights that water features and green spaces can significantly cool urban environments. “By integrating water features with other urban cooling strategies, such as tree planting and expanded greenery, cities can effectively counter UHI effects, leading to more sustainable and resilient urban environments,” the report said.
Read more: Delhi heat impact: Heat wave hits earnings, health of auto rickshaw drivers
Another study published in Sustainable Cities and Society in April 2023 also points out how the implementation of urban blue and green infrastructures can help regulate urban temperatures. The authors note that water bodies in urbanised areas, such as lakes and wetlands, reduce temperature due to their strong evaporation and high heat capacities during the daytime. Water has a high specific heat capacity—it absorbs a lot of heat before it begins to warm up.
Researchers at the Universities of Bath in the United Kingdom and Bologna in Italy have shown that more than a single large water body, it is a network of small water bodies that can more effectively cool areas and mitigate daytime extreme temperatures in spring and early summer across larger distances.
According to Vavre, SEEDS India is already working on solutions to ensure Hauz-i-Shamsi has enough water to provide ecological services. “We had to stop untreated wastewater from flowing into the water body as it was killing the tank. But lakes need water to stay alive. We are in discussion with authorities so that treated sewage can be fed into the lake,” she said.
Vishwanath supports the idea of using treated urban wastewater to revive lakes. “If we treat sewage and use constructed wetlands to further clean the water, it can be emptied into lakes. It will not only help manage cities’ wastewater but also create cool microclimates in urban centres,” he said, adding that in Bengaluru, 27 lakes are already receiving treated wastewater, and the aim is to cover 40 such lakes in the city.
This story is supported by the Promise of Commons Media Fellowship 2024, focusing on the significance of commons and its community stewardship.
(This story was first published on Mongabay. It has been republished with permission. The original article can be found here.)