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Rivers Take New Look

Comes water, comes festivity

Morshed Ali Khan
Arrival of upstream floodwaters has not only flushed the stagnant dirty water out of the four rivers around the capital but also sparked festivity among millions of people on the banks.
With the fresh waters from the Jamuna in the north rushing down through a network of 150 kilometres of rivers and canals, gangetic dolphins have also returned to these rivers.
The positive indication however does not stop the polluters. Millions of gallons of untreated industrial and domestic waste is still dumped into the rivers every day. Only the rush of floodwaters immediately disperses the pollutants downstream.
Taking advantage of the clean water, every day thousands of men, women and children from villages and suburban areas along the rivers are seen pleasuretripping on motorised and country boats. From every locality along the rivers, people are organising river cruises on the weekends taking with them loudspeakers and singing parties.
Townships along the rivers are also organising boat races and other aquatic sports. Men, women and children on the banks are now seen washing and bathing in the rivers — an unthinkable act only a month ago.
Within the last four weeks, water level in the Buriganga, Turag, Balu and Sitalakhya has risen to over five metres, flushing the dirty water downstream and creating a solid downward current, say experts at the river water monitoring cell of the Water Development Board.
During the dry season the level of the stagnant water in these rivers varies from one to three metres.
During the seven months of dry period, the Buriganga, Turag, Balu and Sitalakhya remain totally stagnant, accumulating millions of tonnes of untreated toxic waste, sewers and solid waste and becoming a veritable pit of sludge.
Residents along the rivers always wait for the flood season to benefit from the rivers, which otherwise remain so dirty and toxic that even the water cannot be touched.
Delwara Sharmin, a private university student, her parents, grandparents, sisters and their children last Friday morning hired a motorised boat for Tk 2,000 for the day and went on a river cruise from Kholamora. Like every year, the stink of the Buriganga puts the family through physical and mental sufferings for over six months, she said.
"The fresh floodwater brings delight to the people in our neighbourhood. Ask anyone in my family on this boat, they will vote for keeping the river clean round the year," she added.
Sharmin's grandfather, retired schoolteacher Mohammad Shamsul Huda,
said pollution in the Buriganga has made many elderly people in his area very sick.
"They [polluters] have no right to inflict such pain on millions of people living along the rivers. You have to live here during the dry season to realise the sufferings of the people," Huda said.
For millions of families like Sharmin's living along the rivers, there appears a ray of hope as the government launches a project to rejuvenate Dhaka's river system with round-the-year water flow within the next three years.
The good news comes with the launch of the Tk 945 crore Buriganga River Restoration Project, in which about 62 kilometres of the New Dhaleshwari, Pungli, Bangshi and Turag rivers upstream the capital would be dredged to restore flow with the Jamuna.
The entire length of the 162.5 kilometres between Dhaka and New Dhaleshwari offtake, half a kilometre downstream of the Bangabandhu Jamuna Bridge, would be restored to maintain flow in the river system of the capital.