Isn't Bangladesh a trash of water?

Bangladesh located on the northern tip of the Bay of Bengal at the lowest reach of the fluvial system bordering India and Myanmar is hydraulically porous by 57(60?) trans-boundary rivers at its 25 administrative districts. The south is open to the sea. The land occupies the deltaic plain of the Ganges-Brahmaputra-Meghna river system criss-crossed by a labyrinth of 230 rivers. These rivers and canals are seasonally flushed by the Ganges, Brahmaputra and Meghna. The Meghna from north-east joining the Ganges-Brahmaputra system constitutes 93 percent of Bangladesh's total inflow and, the rest 7 percent is generated within the country chiefly from annual average rainfall of 2300 mm. The Ganges, Brahmaputra and Meghna (GBM) rivers system discharge fluctuates between dry and wet season by ratio more than 1:10. The annual sediment discharge known to be the highest in the world ranges between 0.5 billion and 1.8 billion tons. The length of the intricate river network that carries the sediment laden flow to the sea is 24,000 Km. or less. The above hydro-dynamics in conjunction with astronomical tidal forces, varying from less than two meter to as high as more than 6 meter, resulting backward effect has not only been complicated but in simultaneous made nation's physical environment more prone to hazards by water pollution.

Pollution enters into the water bodies through industrial liquid waste and household hazardous waste and refuse disposal; wash off and soil erosion from agricultural lands carrying mainly fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides; and run off from city streets, horticultural, gardening and commercial activities in the urban environment. Contamination of water is the starting event in the environmental decadence process. Water in its cyclic movement continuously brings correction to this phenomenon in maintaining the ecological balance.

By next 20 years forty percent of the national population will drift into urban centers. Roughly there are 525 urban centers including 255 municipalities and six city corporations. There is not much information on how much waste those urban population generate every day. The Dhaka city however produces 16,382 tons of solid wastes every day which with increasing population will rise by 2025 up to 47,064 tons per day. In Bangladesh out of the 720 industrial units in Chittagong on the south-east only 20 per cent treat their effluents before disposal into water. In Khulna on the south-west, 300 large industrial units that discharge 10 million gallons of liquid wastes each year enter into nation's waters with little or no treatment. An estimated 1800 tons of pesticides enter into the water bodies annually. Use of pesticides has increased fourfold and fertilizer consumption in farming has risen closely by 400 per cent between 1975 and 2005. Approximately 400,000 tons of oil a year is spilled into Bay of Bengal of which 6,000 tons is contributed by Bangladesh. Spillage of crude oil residue and wastewater effluent from land based refineries amount to about 50,000 tons per year.

Compared to Bangladesh the land surface of India (3,287,782 sq.km.) is 22 times greater. Similarly proportionate is the disposal of wastes into water bodies. Eighty percent of the 14 perennial rivers in India are polluted with sewage. The generation of wastewater in India during 1981 was estimated to be 74,529 million liters a day. The facilities to treat waste water are not adequate in any city in India. Presently, only about 10 percent of the waste water generated is treated; the rest is discharged into the water bodies eventually entering through the hydraulic pores into Bangladesh at downstream. More than 70 percent water use in India is ambient to agricultural purposes. Run-off from the agricultural fields, as it contains fertilizers and pesticides, draining into rivers eventually flows downstream. Disposal of obsolete computers is another recent threat to water pollution. It has been estimated that the amount of e-waste landing in India would be 20,000 kilos a day. India has nearly two million computers in the pipeline for recycling. The acid treatment and burning also contaminates water through effluents and other form of disposal.

E-waste is the speedily growing waste streams around the world triggered by the exponential growth of personal computers and by their rapid rate of obsolescence. Without recycling, this will result in the ejection of 550 million kilos of lead, 900,000 kilos of cadmium and 180,000 kilos of mercury in the global environment. By 2005, 315 million computers worldwide were ready for disposal. Lead, cadmium, mercury and other substances like chromium, plastic and flame retardant materials in computers are hazardous substances. E-waste is the century's new threat to environment.

Agricultural fertilizers and pesticides, industrial effluents, and household wastewater that are discharged without treatment into surface water may also leak into sub-surface water. Toxic substances entering the lakes and lagoons, streams, rivers, oceans, and other water bodies are either dissolved or lie suspended or deposited on the bed adversely affecting the aquatic ecosystems. Pollutants can also seep down and affect the groundwater. Polluted water is unsuitable for drinking, recreation, agriculture, and industry. It diminishes the aesthetic quality of lakes and rivers. More seriously, contaminated water reduces reproductive ability of aqua-lives. Eventually, it is a hazard to human health. None can escape the adverse impacts of water pollution. Industrial effluents, agricultural run-off, dumping of toxic wastes thus entering into groundwater, rivers, and other water bodies, and through the food chain, ends up in our households.

Bangladesh has its national policy on water pollution prevention and ecosystem conservation. The Environment Policy 1992, Environment law 1995 and, Environment Preservation Rules 1997 are the legislations in place for restoration of environment. But all these could as yet make little or no effect on the deteriorating environment. Because monitoring the water quality is extremely weak. Trans-boundary movement of hazardous wastes is seen emerging as a critical issue, which countries in this region have not been able to adequately address. Although seven out of nine countries in South Asia have signed the Basle Convention, the region lacks a common approach to the import of hazardous wastes. It is clear that the institutional and regulatory capacity of the countries in this region for surveillance on the import of hazardous wastes is limited.

Among the institutional mechanisms for regional cooperation on the environment, the most significant one is South Asia Cooperative Environment Programme (SACEP), established in 1982 under the aegis of the United Nations. The SACEP is responsible for the implementation of a regional project resulting from the SAARC meeting of environmental ministers held in Malé, Maldives, in October 1997. The Male Declaration enunciated a need for a regional environmental action plan and adopted a common position. The absence, however, of a formal affiliation with SAARC limits SACEP's ability to mobilize resources and to implement regional actions.

Infrastructure development and environmental damages together have gone so far by such extent that reversal is no more possible; and wise neither. In the process of developing and managing the nation's water resources targeting agricultural production, 14,000 km of zigzag embankment, 13,000 appurtenant structures and 3,500 km of snaking drainage channels including huge irrigation canals built as of now over a period of more than 50 years impacting the hydraulics of streams has culminated in disruption of its ecological equilibrium. As a consequence, the balancing process of ecology has been terminated worsening further the dimensions of the environment. The natural drainage canals have been strangled to death leading to eventual disconnection with the broader hydrologic characteristics of the region as a whole and as such converted into smaller isolated units. Only route out is the mitigation.

Efforts may therefore concentrate on resuscitation of the natural streams integrating it with consumptive and non-consumptive use of water. In doing so, first develop a dynamic digitized elevation map of the country's land surface; secondly carry out mathematical modeling of round the year flow patterns of water and, thirdly rearticulate the hydrologic characteristics of the basin in totality with a view to washing the nation's land mass bi-directionally with particular reference to drainage, diversion and detention. Based on hydrologic approach derived from the model the hydraulic infrastructures in place may be relocated in regional context for maintaining the balanced ecology by the nature itself within the nature. On default lives in Bangladesh will continue to grow in a trash of water severely polluted by wastes of all forms from home and abroad.

Md. Saeedur Rahman is a former Chief Engineer of BWDB