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Teesta drying up killing many Nilphamari rivers

Irrigation, fish farming at stake

Our Correspondent, Nilphamari
Teesta, the biggest river in the district, has alarmingly dried up, posing threat to several other linked rivers in Nilphamari.
Lack of excavation or dredging has contributed to worsening the situation that has put irrigation and fish projects at stake.
In the recent past, all the 20 rivers in the district saw more or less water flow even during the dry' season. Several of the rivers, small or big, are tributaries of the Teesta.
After building of Gojal Doha barrage in Indian territory, 110 km in the upstream
from Teesta barrage at Dalia point in Nilphamari district a few years ago, India started unilaterally withdrawing water from the river to irrigate agricultural land in their part.
With insufficient water flow inTeesta, water level in its tributaries and other small rivers in tire area has fallen down alarmingly and the river beds have dried up.
As a consequence, Teesta Irrigation Project, the country's largest project of the kind, cannot be made fully effective.
Due to disturbance in fish breeding with shrinking of water areas, many species of local fishes have become extinct and thousands of
fishermen have given up their ancestral profession of fishing.
Official list of Bangladesh Water Development Board (BWDB) in Nilphamari mentions eight rivers in the district, namely, Teesta, Charal Kanta, Dcunai, Buri Khora, Buri Teesta, Jarnineswari, Kharkharia and Dhaijan, BWDB sources said.
But the official list excludes quite a few other rivers flowing through the district, which are now in a critical condition.
Farmers are preparing Boro seedbeds and cultivating paddy in most areas of the dried up river beds.
In some places influential
people of villages around the rivers illegally occupied the dried up river beds and turned them into plain lands by filling with earth to use it for regular cultivation.
The sub divisional engineer of BWDB in Nilphamari, Nural Islam said they had informed the higher authorities to excavate a few rivers on priority basis.
"Reasonable sharing of Teesta water is the only way to improve the ecological situation in the area. But it is still to be achieved despite a few meetings between Bangladesh and Indian governments," environmental activist Golam Mostafa of NGOCAMPsaid.