Dec 3, 2016- For Phurwanima Sherpa, a 28-year-old resident of Pangboche—a small settlement in Solukhumbu—a recent successful operation to drain water from the Imja Lake comes as a sigh of relief. Sherpa, like the 90,000 others living downriver on the Dudh Koshi, into which Imja drains, had been living in constant fear of a glacial lake outburst, particularly after the Gorkha earthquakes and its recurring aftershocks. “We have had restless nights for the past year,” said Sherpa, who runs a small lodge in Pangboche—a gateway to several trekking destination in the Everest region—“For now, the persistent fear has subsided.” Imja Tsho, a glacial lake fed by the melt-off from the Imja Glacier, is one of the 21 glacial lakes in the Nepal’s Himalayas identified as potentially hazardous, and one of the six marked as critically in danger of bursting. Now, with the completion of a project to lower the water levels at Imja by 3.4 metres—marked by a handover ceremony held on November 23, the danger of an outburst and resultant flooding has been averted, even if it is a measure that is ultimately just a stop gap. When first mapped in 1962, Imja Tsho measured just 0.03 square kilometres. But the accelerated melting of the Imja Glacier and the merging of small glacial lakes over the decades meant that by 2000, Imja measured 0.8 square kilometres; by 2009 it measured 1.055. Most recent data pegs the lake at 1.28 square kilometres and its depth at 149 metres.
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