Kameng River Recovery At Slow Pace

Kameng River Water Turned Muddy in October

Even after passage of three weeks since the Kameng River suddenly turned black leading to the death of thousands of fish on October 29 the turbidity remains more or less the same with a slight improvement.

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The turbidity in the Kameng River has improved marginally, informed Divisional Forest Officer, Vikas Swami. “The actual report on the quality of the river is yet to be ascertained because the experts from Itanagar have taken samples for testing and results are yet to be released. However, on physical visit, we have found that there is marginal improvement in the river,” added the DFO.

Though Swami informed that with the support of NGOs and local denizens, administration has restricted any kind of fishing in the Kameng River however it is reliably learnt that people around Seppa in Pacha river are still fishing with large traditional traps.

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Independent Researcher Chintan Sheth, who has been studying the phenomenon since Day one and currently is at Seppa assisting the administration, said, “It seems like turbidity is improving. But the fish population has crashed which means the river is far from recovered.”

He added, the landslide upstream on the Wapra Bung river has reduced its activity but is perhaps still ongoing albeit at a much smaller scale.

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We have one clear satellite image from Thursday but it’s not easy to interpret what kind of risk remains in the river. It’s difficult to interpret if there is any blockage of the glacier or not, Sheth claims.

The satellite images also show that the debris flow events took out hundreds of trees and the riverside vegetation will take a long long time to recover. We need more time to say how old the vegetation was to interpret the frequency of such events, Sheth said.

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