PINAKI ROY and MONJURUL HAQUE

Abdul Aziz once harvested rice in abundance from his fields next to Labondaho, once a picturesque river located in Indrapur, Gazipur’s Sreepur. Today, he stands on cracked earth, nursing losses and lamenting poisoned waters.

This year, he invested Tk 18,000 in cultivation, expecting to reap 37 maunds (1 maund = 37.3242 kilogrammes) of paddy. Instead, he harvested only 21. “If the water wasn’t so polluted, I could’ve met my target,” he told The Daily Star.

Aziz farms on 35 decimals of land beside the river, now reduced to a narrow canal with stagnant water, choked with industrial waste and sewage. Locals no longer call it Labondaho, but Lobolong, the bitterness in their voices unmistakable.

We met Aziz just past a culvert on the road to the Gazipur Safari Park, a tourist trail that masks the silent crisis unfolding behind the treeline. For locals, the devastation is inescapable.

Aziz’s neighbour, Matiur Rahman, fared even worse. His land, flooded with foul-smelling water, yielded just five maunds of rice since the embankment he made to save the land was breached.

The pollution of Labondaho has turned farming into a game of chance, one that farmers increasingly lose. Across at least 50 villages, including Kabarghata, Beltoli, Uttar Beltoli, Korotoa, Shibit Chala, Baniar Chala, Beraider Chala, Boirar Chala, Paillabandha, Pirujali, Bhanipur, Mirzapur and more, farmers share the same story. Fields either wither in drought or drown in toxic runoff. Yields plummet. Illnesses rise.

Locals and environmentalists estimate that hundreds of acres of farmland have become uncultivable due to persistent waterlogging and contamination.

Once the lifeblood of an agrarian economy, the Labondaho is now a cautionary tale of industrial recklessness. What was once a river is now a black, foul-smelling stream that poisons land, sickens families, and suffocates livelihoods.

According to the water resources ministry, the 29-kilometre-long Labondaho originates in Gazipur Sadar and empties into the Turag. But residents say it flows from the Khiru river in Bhaluka, Mymensingh, coursing through Maona Uttar Para, Maona Bazar, Gargaria Master Bari, Bagher Bazar, and the Indrapur Safari Park area before joining the Turag at Bhabanipur.

Pollution, locals say, began in the 1990s “We

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