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BITTER TRUTH

Conserve water, save life

MD. ASADULLAH KHAN
WATER is fundamental to our very survival. But every summer Bangladesh, during the past few years, has been increasingly facing water shortage. From being a necessity, water has now become a luxury. With pipes running dry, residents in Dhaka and Chittagong are looking for alternative sources like tankers, mostly serviced by Wasa. With water table going lower and lower, the situation is set to deteriorate further. While the demand for fresh water in Dhaka city comes to about 2,100 million litres, Dhaka Wasa provides about 1,800 million litres through 550 deep tube wells and four treatment plants. But the shortfall, as it appears, seems to be bigger than what Wasa says.
With no visible effort to conserve surface water either in Dhaka city or around the country, about 85% of the requirement in Dhaka city has to be met from underground sources. In the villages, with shortage of water due to drying up of ponds and with no digging of fresh ponds during the last several decades, the situation is far more pathetic. Villagers there remain mired in their old practice of sinking tube wells deeper and deeper to reach the decreasing level of ground water.
In district towns and adjoining places, there is neither supply from the municipality nor are there freshwater ponds to meet the needs of the populace. With water demand becoming acute, most municipalities and city corporations focused on the immediate—tapping ground water resources in and around the cities. Pumps are being sunk 10 to 20 metres deeper every year. Worse, conservation has not figured in our scheme of things—neither directly through steps like water harvesting nor indirectly through restoration of canals, lakes and watersheds that have been encroached upon by land grabbers.
The pollution of city lakes has resulted from the network of sewer lines installed either by Wasa or DCC, keeping the lakes as the only discharge point through a vast array of drain outlets. The disaster is compounded by the criminal action of allowing industries to live cheek-by-jowl with residential quarters and large apartment blocks. Alarmed citizens do know that they are being slowly poisoned by hazardous wastes and toxic chemicals leaking out from tanneries, smelters, dyeing units and a host of industries and shanty units, large and small. Shockingly, the poisoned water of these lakes and rivers now symbolises not life but death.Clearly, this hazardous waste problem has been ignored too long.
The immediate task of Rajuk, Wasa and DCC would be to boost water table in Dhaka city and its adjoining areas. These organisations, because of lack of coordination, cannot do it and each of them is trying to pass the buck on to the other. There should be an autonomous body for the protection, conservation, restoration, regeneration and integrated development of the lakes, watersheds, and rivers like Buriganga, Shitalakhya, Turag, Balu and many canals. The government has to restore these water bodies because they could be a supply source for Wasa in times of severe crisis that the city dwellers are now experiencing.
Access to adequate, unpolluted water is increasingly being viewed as a basic human right, something that the government must ensure. Dhaka Wasa has to find out ways and means to lay sewage pipes and link them to treatment plants to save city dwellers from the growing load of pollution and sewage that will increase at least five times by the
year 2020, when the population will jump to 30 million as some demographic data by the World Bank sources suggest.
Apart from being a barometer of the ecological health of a city, water bodies also determine the climate. They help control humidity and temperature levels, recharge aquifers and also act as instruments of rainwater harvesting. With a little initiative, commitment and imagination, these lakes could be formed into a hydrological chain and, during monsoon flood and water logging in the city, flood water in some low lying areas of the city could flow into the next lake. Rapid urbanisation has led to loss of wetlands and even foreshore of the rivers that has brought in its wake severe water logging in Dhaka city every year with the onset of monsoon rain.
Evidently, as demands for water increases, supply for the developing world's already water-starved agriculture is further affected, thereby producing a monumental food security crisis. Bangladesh is already bearing the brunt of this crisis. Hydrologists say that the world's total usable fresh water supply is finite—about 24 million cubic kilometers—which, according to the United Nations, is not sufficient for its population which is growing at the unsustainable rate of 110 million annually. The most worrisome report about the future availability of water comes from the development mandarins who say that by 2030, 47% of the world's population will be living in areas of high water stress. Undeniably true, water resource management impacts health, food production and security, domestic water supply, sanitation, energy, industry and environmental sustainability.
In the context of such terrifying prospects, Bangladesh has to take some aggressive measures to conserve its water resources. The greater tragedy is that Bangladesh has enough water to go around for its 160 million people but not enough people to handle the present critical situation.
Uttara lake, a vast water body that could be a source of fresh water has been reduced to a narrow creek of toxic and polluted water because of indiscriminate dumping of household garbage and wastes, effluents from industrial and dyeing units. Because of indifference, negligence and inaction, Uttara lake has shrunk to 3.5 km in length from 5 km and width 100m from 200m as a recent survey report by Rajuk indicates. All indications are there that the lake is destined to disappear in no time. Following a representation by citizens to the prime minister, a directive issued by the office of the prime minister in January, 2011 asked the Housing and Works Ministry to take effective steps for the recovery and conservation of Uttara lake.
Consequently, Rajuk prepared a Development Project Profile (DPP) costing about Tk.86 crore, keeping provision for acquisition of 2.433 acres of land on the
last end of the lake. The proposal went to the Planning Commission in July 2012 for final approval. The Infrastructure Division of the Planning Commission, in its Project Evaluation Committee (PEC) meeting last December, questioned the justification of including some components in the DPP. It asked Rajuk to resubmit the DPP after adjusting cost escalation through a joint survey by the Housing and Works Ministry, Rajuk, IMED, and the Infrastructure Division of the Planning Commission with exclusion of some components that they deemed unnecessary. But Rajuk or the agencies concerned have made no effort to do so as yet.
It should be brought home to all involved in governance, planning and healthcare that air, land and water are precious natural resources, most needed for healthy living. Water, not oil, is the most precious liquid in our lives, and we must conserve surface water that will help recharge the aquifers.
The writer is a columnist of The Daily Star.
E-mail: aukhandk@gmail.com