Save Buriganga, save lives

The plight of the river Buriganga symbolises the general state of many rivers in Bangladesh, a large flat land crisscrossed by hundreds of rivers which faces an uphill battle to keep them navigable and their waters safe for human and aquatic lives. Bangladesh has about 700 rivers including tributaries that flow through the country constituting a waterway of total length of around 24,140 kilometres and a large chunk of the country's 160 million people depend on them for a living and for transportation.
Dhaka was proclaimed the capital of Bengal by the Mughals in the early 17th century. It was a strategic decision by the Mughals considering the economic, navigational and security potentials of the perennial river Buriganga which surrounded parts of Dhaka. Since then the civilisation of Dhaka City has been developed by the bank of the Buriganga River. The history, livelihood, culture and heritage of Dhaka City have been largely shaped by this small but important river. Four hundred years later the river continues to play a very important role, since according to officials an average of 150,000 people use the Sadarghat launch terminal, one of the largest river ports in the world, for departure and arrival every day. But for hundreds of years the Buriganga has been continuously abused by unplanned urbanisation and unsupervised industrialisation. The onslaught of the resultant pollution has virtually killed the Buriganga.
Bangladesh is the lower riparian country of the river Ganges-Padma, the river Brahmaputra and the river Meghna (GBM), but those rivers are being increasingly degraded by untreated domestic raw sewage, industrial effluent, and run-off pollution from chemical fertilisers and pesticides. With the passage of time, the river has now been turned almost into a "septic reservoir" in absence of proper supervision and management by the agencies concerned, as about 200 tanneries, most of them located at Hazaribagh, pump about 21,000 cubic metres of hazardous waste. The Tejgaon industrial area offloads about 60 thousand cubic metres of polluted liquid waste into the Buriganga every day.
Experts identified nine industrial areas in and around the capital city - Tongi, Tejgaon, Hazaribagh, Tarabo, Narayanganj, Savar, Gazipur, Dhaka Export Processing Zone and Ghorashal - as the prime sources of river pollution. Most of the industrial units of these areas have no sewerage treatment plants of their own. A World Bank study said four major rivers near Dhaka -- the river Buriganga, river Shitalakhya, river Turag and river Balu -- receive 1.5 million cubic metres of waste water from 7,000 industrial units in surrounding areas and another 0.5 million cubic metres from other sources every day while nearly 4.0 million people directly suffer the consequence of poor water quality of the river system caused by untreated textile industry waste alone. Besides, Dhaka city discharges about 4,500 tonnes of solid waste every day, of which maximum 30 per cent are disposed at designated dumpsites.
Unabated encroachment that prevents the free flow of water, dumping of medicinal waste and waste of river passengers have compounded the problem, making the water unusable for humans and livestock. Nearly 4.0 million people of the city are exposed to the consequences of water pollution every day.
Sadarghat is the most familiar point of Buriganga and also in Dhaka. Everyday about 150,000 people use this point or terminal for their journey. Most of them are illiterate and do not know how to use river-side areas properly. They throw water bottles, paper and other harmful things into the river water. And this way the river is polluted vastly.
"The pollutants have eaten up all oxygen in the Buriganga and we call it biologically dead. It is like a septic tank," said Khawaja Minnatullah, a World Bank specialist on environment and water management. "There is no fish or aquatic life in this river apart from zero oxygen survival kind of organisms."
During the dry season between October and April the river becomes totally stagnant with its upstream drying up and cutting off its link with the river Jamuna. During the seven-month long stagnancy of the river, billions of gallons of toxic wastes from the city industries, mainly tanneries, accumulate in its water, turning the entire 54 kilometres stretch of the river into a septic tank.
Buriganga is polluted by both the poor and the rich. The poor damage the environment just to survive without knowing its devastating effects on earth and their children. But the rich pollute environment for their financial gains. They grab land and pollute river water for their personal benefit without caring for the earth and the future generation. Viewed in this context, government's efforts to save the Buriganga and all other rivers should be intensified for saving lives of the country's 160 million people who depend on them for a living and for transportation.
Tarequl Islam Munna is journalist, columnist and conservator, wildlife and environment. E-mail: [email protected]