The government has undertaken several projects including rain water conservation to address the drinking water crisis in coastal and hilly areas. Once these are implemented, the crisis of potable water of the people and local industries in those areas will come to an end.
With this vision, the Ministry of Water Resources (MOWR) will start work on two separate projects worth Tk 46.51 crore and Tk 3.56 crore respectively for digging ponds and dighis to conserve rainwater in coastal and hilly areas of Khulna, Barisal and Chittagong divisions.
Elaborate study on these projects has been done and after sending them to the planning ministry, work will soon start and will continue till June, 2024, sources in the ministry said.
These projects will play a major role in groundwater refill, supply of potable water in disasters, reduction of salinity of water, development of agriculture, fisheries and forestry.
A verification meeting of the projects was held at the secretariat on Thursday. State Minister for Water Resources Zahid Faruk said, "Disasters are on the rise due to climate change and such can cause great distress to the people in the coastal areas. Therefore, this initiative of the government is to conserve rain water by digging ponds and dighis on government land and maintaining it. Water will be delivered to the locality through connection from these reservoirs."
Additional Secretary (Development Division) of the Ministry of Water Resources Md Rokon Ud-Doula told Bangladesh Post, "We have planned and verified these projects long ago considering the plight of the people living in the coastal areas. If implemented, these will alleviate the drinking water crisis of coastal cyclones and flood victims."
Mentioning that the ground water level in Sitakunda and Mirsarai areas of Chittagong Hill Tracts has come down, he added, "We will build special dams in these areas to conserve rain water. It will be possible to meet the demand. In addition, these areas can be established as full-fledged tourist spot due to the increase of various tourists in recent times."
Earlier on February 5 this year, State Minister for Water Resources Zahid Faruk, after visiting various areas of Satkhira and Khulna affected by Amphan said, plans for a sustainable embankment were underway after conducting a survey in the coastal area.
Meanwhile, a separate project on water management in Gopalganj to eliminate waterlogging and increase agricultural production was discussed at a meeting of MOWR at the Secretariat on Thursday. The objective of the project is to protect about 65,571 hectares of land in Tungipara, Kotalipara and Gopalganj Sadar from floods and salinity and to facilitate naval communication.
In a report titled 'In search of potable water in the context of climate change and expansion of saline areas', the Water Committee said that in addition to salinity, there are major problems with groundwater in the southwest coastal areas of Bangladesh. River-borne silt is abundant in these areas. Therefore, there is very little layer of coarse grained sand or silt suitable for underground reservoirs. Although the silt layer is found, the thickness of this sand layer is very low, and somewhere deeper than the ground in this sand layer. Extracting fresh water from these grounds is a hard job to do.
