The Rajshahi City Corporation has planned to conserve 53 natural water-bodies in the city in order to retain its surface water resources for protecting the environment from further degradation.
The city corporation has adopted a Tk 206.24-crore uplift project titled ‘Natural Water Bodies Conservation and Development in Rajshahi City’ to attain the cherished goal side by side with protecting the ponds from further dumping.
Under the project, Ashraful Haque, chief engineer of RCC, told the news agency that 53 ponds, at least one or more ponds in each of the city’s total 30 wards, will be preserved and 98 acres of land will be acquired for the purpose. None would be allowed to fill up the ponds.
Embankments of the ponds will be concretised with retaining wall besides necessary excavation and re-excavation. In addition to bench and walkway, concrete stair will be constructed in all the developed ponds to make those attractive among the nearby people and facilitate them to enjoy and use those suitably.
Engineer Ashraful Haque said there were 729 ponds and canals in the metropolis in 2002, but the figure was declined to 393 at present due to indiscriminate earth-filling and unplanned urbanisation.
Due to abnormal decline in surface water, he said, dependence on groundwater has increased to ensure supply water to the city dwellers causing unusual lowering of groundwater table in the last couple of years.
The situation worsens during the dry season leaving most of the hand-driven tubewells inoperative. ‘We have no way to conserve the surface water resources from all sorts of depletion to make the groundwater table intact,’ he observed.
Upon successful implementation of the project, he, however, hoped that fish production would be enhanced together with protection of the endangered fish species from further extinction.
-With New Age input
