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Restore canals, wetlands to stop waterlogging

Suggest experts as water bodies being lost due to unplanned urbanisation

Tawfique Au
Mindless destruction of natural water bodies in and around Dhaka coupled with flagrant disregard for urban planning of successive governments have brought the capital to its knees, said noted urban experts.
The Government must recover rivers and water bodies from encroachers and institute a single authority for a handy drainage system to save the capital from waterlogging, they said.
Prof Nazrul Islam, a noted urban researcher and currently the chairman of
University Grants Commission, said the government must ensure flow capacity of canals and rivers and recover flood retention ponds in and around Dhaka city.
"The government has to retrieve the flood flow zones from unauthorised housing projects, put a functional drainage system in place and recover water bodies and reservoirs," he said.
A high-powered authority at the Prime Minister's Office is imperative in this regard to help coordinate the city governance through different agencies, he suggested.
Dhaka Water Supply and Sewerage
Authority (Wasa) has to update and implement the drainage management master plan while government should adopt and apply a comprehensive physical development policy and urbanisation plan.
Prof Sarwar Jahan of urban and regional planning department of Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET) and president of Bangladesh Institute of Planners, said, "Dhaka is not a planned city. The city was ill-planned."
All the water bodies, wetlands and
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open spaces have been turned into built-up areas casliing in on the absence of a complete master plan.
Due to lack of open space, rainwater can’t percolate into the ground and it stays over the surface as stagnant water con tnbu 11 ng to water logging.
Rain and floodwater must have passage through canals, stormwater drainage system and natural water bodies to finally fall into the river water.
The existing storm sewer is not only rundown but also inadequate, said Jahan.
As the open spaces of the city have been grabbed to serve political interest of successive governments, stormwater can’t find any outlet and gets stuck on the roads creating water logging, said President of Institute of Architects Bangladesh Mubasshar Hussein.
Prof Mujibur Rahman of Buet civil engineering department said that drainage of Dhaka has to function as an integrated system comprised of tertiary, secondary and primary stages.
Tertiary phase is a small-diameter drainage system through which household water passes into a drain, which is bigger in diameter and called the secondary phase.
The water, through this second phase, finally falls into the canals and rivers, the primarydrainagesystem.
"Tertiary and secondary phases will mean nothing unless the primary drainage system remains functional," said Rahman, adding: "It means the canals and rivers should not be allowed to be filled with earth by grabbers."
There must be a single authorin' to manage Dhaka's drainage system; the system has so far been in a total mess with different agencies working on ad hoc basis in their own ways without anycoordination.
1 he DCC installed the tertiary drainage system but does not maintain it properly. Dhaka Wasa installed the second phase, which is inadequate and suffers from lack of maintenance.
Iqbal Habib, member secretary of Bangladesh Paribesh AndnlmrtBapah SaWiTiar the
rainwater of Dhaka city has to be drained out either into the river Buriganga in the west or Balu in the east.
But die water can't flow to the west due to embankment and inadequate number of pumps can't drain out water and illegal housing projects on the eastern fringe gobbled up vast low-lying wetlands, canals and water bodies.
Dhaka Wasa made a flash flood management master plan in 1990. but nobody knows about how far it has been implemented, he said.
Dr Atiq Rahman, executive director of Bangladesh Centre for Advanced Studies (BCAS) and a lead author of the UN Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCO, said Dhaka must have around 20 retention ponds like Hatirjheel to tackle the stormwater.