Divers detect more holes under Jamuna dyke

As water engineers are yet to dig up the reasons for collapses in the Jamuna embankment’s hard point, Bangladesh Navy divers detected more scouring holes that could cause harms to the dyke like the last two Fridays.
An 11-member team of navy divers joined BWDB divers Saturday and started underwater search adjacent to damaged sites of the hard point. Team leader Lt Ariful Islam told journalists that there were some scouring holes to the south of the damaged sites of the dyke and the biggest of them could cause the similar damages to the dyke as seen on July 10 and July 17.
About 500-ft stretch of Sirajganj town protection embankment’s hard point was washed away by the Jamuna river on Friday, just a week after another stretch of 500 ft caved in, posing erosion threat to Sirajganj town and ringing alarm bell for the Jamuna Bridge structure just 8 km away.
Alarmed by the navy team, the BWDB has intensified the emergency maintenance works, Habibur Rahman Zinnah, additional director general of the water agency, told New Age.
Secretary to the water resources ministry M Wahiduzzaman, along with senior officials of Bangladesh Water Development Board, Saturday visited the damaged sites of the dyke.
‘We have to know the law of nature first before we take the right initiatives. Jamuna is one of the unpredictable rivers in the world and it will not follow our commands,’ the secretary said.
‘The technology what we have at present for bathymetrical survey is not sufficient for the Jamuna. Not to speak about us, none in the world will be able to achieve the technology to make proper assessment of erosions of such intensity. We have not seen such situation in last ten years,’ he added.
BWDB director general Abul Kalam Azad said, ‘We cannot really say what are the reasons behind the sudden collapse that we saw two times in a week. We have to wait until probe committee reports come.’
Additional director general and head of the probe committee Habibur Rahman Zinnah, chief engineer of Rajshahi zone Sajedul Karim and executive engineer design Motahar Hossain were also present.
The 2.5-km long hard point of the Sirajganj Town Protection Embankment was constructed between 1995 and 1999 by South Korea’s Hyundai Corporation with a guaranty for 100 years. A 100-ft chunk of the northern portion of the dyke collapsed even before the Korean builder handed over it to the BWDB authority.
Water resources minister Ramesh Sen on Friday warned that the government would take legal step against the Korean company if the probe reports detect any fault in construction or design of the embankment. If necessary, the government would plan another dyke to save the town, he announced.
Although the top BWDB official earlier warned that the unabated erosion of the Brahmaputra Right Embankment, of which town protection dyke is a part, would threaten the Jamuna Bridge structure in future, communications minister Syed Abul Hossain asserted that the bridge, built in 1997, would remain safe for 100 years.

Courtesy of NewAgebd