Flow reduction blamed for sorry state of rivers

Green activists have held the drastic fall of water flow, caused by the constructions of dams and barrages by upper riparian India, responsible for the dire state of the country’s rivers.
They were addressing the participants of a public rally jointly organised by the Bangladesh Paribesh Andolan and the National River Protection Movement, in front of the National Museum at Shahbagh, to mark the International River Protection Day 2010.
The rally, presided over by BPA’s joint general secretary JK Baral, was addressed by coordinator of the NRPM Abdul Matin, columnist Syed Abul Maksud, BPA’s joint secretary Shahjahan Mridha, Save the Buriganga Movement’s coordinator Mihir Biswas and other environmental activists.
They observed that withdrawal of water by India from the common rivers by construction of dams, barrages and hydro-electric project has turned Bangladesh’s torrential rivers almost into trickles.
India’s dams or barrages on each of 57 common rivers, by significantly reducing flow of their waters, is causing siltation of our rivers and making them unnavigable, they pointed out.
The environmental activists also pointed out that thousands of cubic metres of garbage and industrial effluents, which are being daily discharged into the Buriganga and Sitalakhya and other rivers surrounding Dhaka, are polluting them beyond redemption. The waters of these rivers have become almost impossible to treat due to the extremely high level of pollution.
Calling upon the government to make the necessary diplomatic efforts immediately to get the country’s due share of water from the common rivers, the speakers said that Bangladesh will have to face severe ecological disaster if the free flow of water in the rivers is not ensured.
They also put forward a set of proposals to the government for protecting the country’s rivers. They include an end to the pollution of all rivers including Buriganga and Sitalakhya, taking necessary measures to cleanse all polluted rivers, ensuring the setting up and use of effluent treatment plants in all industrial units, relocating the tanneries from Hazaribagh without any further delay, stopping the use of toxic chemicals in the industries, stopping discharge of all effluents into the rivers, taking steps for capital dredging of the rivers, and stopping the leasing out of lands and hills on the banks of the rivers.
They also demanded that the government should form a river pollution control authority to oversee these activities.

Courtesy of NewAgebd