Bangladesh, Dhaka: pollution gets to groundwater

River pollution around the capital [Dhaka] has reached such a level that the groundwater system where the aquifers are recharged from the riverbeds is being contaminated, a recent study shows. [F]rom November to April [2009], virtually no water but only stinky mucky liquid flows in the gradually narrowing rivers — the Buriganga, Shitalakshya, Turag and Balu — as no governments could stop discharge of liquid waste into them.

Jet-black waters of the Balu river. Photo: SK Enamul Haq

A recent study [...] by the World Bank and the Institute of Water Modelling (IWM) says: “The groundwater system is being contaminated in areas where aquifers are recharged from the riverbeds. The pollution is creeping towards the central part of the city with time.” The study mentions groundwater in Hazaribagh, home of toxic tannery industries, as the most affected. “It is quite likely that in the long run groundwater would be affected from the surface at solid waste or industrial effluent dumping ground,” the report adds.

Currently, 85 percent of the total demand of city water is met through groundwater sources as most of the surface water is contaminated, according to Dhaka Water and Sewerage Authority (Wasa).

[...] The pollution has become so ‘usual’ that the Department of Environment now does not measure its level anymore.

[...] People living by the rivers say just twenty years ago these rivers abounded with different varieties of fish. [...] But in just two decades indiscriminate discharge of human excreta, household garbage and industrial waste, mainly liquid waste of dyeing and tannery industries, left the rivers dead.

[...] A recent research by Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (Buet) shows the pollution level in the Buriganga, Shitalakshya, Balu and most parts of the Turag so high that simply no living organism can survive in their waters.

Source: Pinaki Roy, Daily Star, 26 Apr 2009