Improving water supply and management
Monday, 20 September 2010
The supply of fresh water for all kinds of uses, specially for homes, is already a serious issue for Bangladesh. It is going to be even more serious in the mid-term. Therefore, planned efforts are needed from now on to prepare for the future water supply. Already, the major cities of the country are under a serious mismatch between the demand for water and its supply. Increasingly, all over the country and in Dhaka city in particular, water levels have fallen alarmingly in the absence of adequate discharge. This is causing land subsidence that cannot go on without increasing alarmingly the risks during earthquake to which the country is prone. Thus, the search for fresh water sources as alternatives must start in right earnest without wasting any precious time.
According to some media reports, the demand for fresh water in Dhaka city is about 2.25 billion litres per day and against it some 1.9 billion can be actually supplied. The demand for water in the city is projected to rise to almost double at 5.0 billion litres per day from the consequences of rapid migration of people to it by 2020. But even if the existing plans for increasing water supply by the Water and Sewerage Authority (WASA) are all carried out neatly by that time, the shortfall in supply would still be some 500 million litres. Thus, the planning and implementation process for augmenting fresh water supplies call for urgent reevaluation.
The scope for intensifying underground lifting of water, as noted, is limited at this stage. More efforts should rather be made to reduce underground lifting of water recklessly. The rivers are the only available sources of surface waters. But the rivers in their severely polluted conditions are found presently unfit to supply fresh water to cities even after treatment of such waters. Thus, other alternatives must be considered and acted upon quickly. The water desalination plants designed to separate salt from sea water and then supplying the same for all kinds of uses as substitutes for fresh water, comes to mind in this connection. Such plants are already operating in a number of countries of the world and meeting large parts of their water requirements. More and more countries round the world are opting for such desalination plants as a sustainable solution to their needs of water supply. For example, 18 desalination plants exist along the Red Sea coast of Saudi Arabia and these have helped in the greening of the once desert country and in increasing its agricultural output from irrigation. There are desalination plants in Iraq, Australia, in the Gulf countries and in the USA. Two desalination plants are also reportedly operating near the Indian city of Chennai and meeting substantially its water needs.
On its part, Bangladesh should seriously consider moves to tread in the same path without wasting time along with other measures of water management such as harvesting rain waters. The establishment of large desalination plants and their operation are not cheap. But the costs are not so prohibitive either that a country like Bangladesh cannot afford them. Besides, the costs of such plants and their operational technologies, are also noted to be falling. In this situation, the policy planners in Bangladesh need to focus their attention and energies on getting such plants started at the earliest to cater to the country’s water security on a lasting basis.
According to some media reports, the demand for fresh water in Dhaka city is about 2.25 billion litres per day and against it some 1.9 billion can be actually supplied. The demand for water in the city is projected to rise to almost double at 5.0 billion litres per day from the consequences of rapid migration of people to it by 2020. But even if the existing plans for increasing water supply by the Water and Sewerage Authority (WASA) are all carried out neatly by that time, the shortfall in supply would still be some 500 million litres. Thus, the planning and implementation process for augmenting fresh water supplies call for urgent reevaluation.
The scope for intensifying underground lifting of water, as noted, is limited at this stage. More efforts should rather be made to reduce underground lifting of water recklessly. The rivers are the only available sources of surface waters. But the rivers in their severely polluted conditions are found presently unfit to supply fresh water to cities even after treatment of such waters. Thus, other alternatives must be considered and acted upon quickly. The water desalination plants designed to separate salt from sea water and then supplying the same for all kinds of uses as substitutes for fresh water, comes to mind in this connection. Such plants are already operating in a number of countries of the world and meeting large parts of their water requirements. More and more countries round the world are opting for such desalination plants as a sustainable solution to their needs of water supply. For example, 18 desalination plants exist along the Red Sea coast of Saudi Arabia and these have helped in the greening of the once desert country and in increasing its agricultural output from irrigation. There are desalination plants in Iraq, Australia, in the Gulf countries and in the USA. Two desalination plants are also reportedly operating near the Indian city of Chennai and meeting substantially its water needs.
On its part, Bangladesh should seriously consider moves to tread in the same path without wasting time along with other measures of water management such as harvesting rain waters. The establishment of large desalination plants and their operation are not cheap. But the costs are not so prohibitive either that a country like Bangladesh cannot afford them. Besides, the costs of such plants and their operational technologies, are also noted to be falling. In this situation, the policy planners in Bangladesh need to focus their attention and energies on getting such plants started at the earliest to cater to the country’s water security on a lasting basis.