Rubber dams to create new land in Bay
The Sandwip and Urir Char islands are likely to become part of mainland Noakhali in the near future thanks to the Meghna estuary development project.
Sandwip is currently facing severe erosion problems.
Several dams would be built at different strategic points in the estuary and they would help create more char lands by artificially concentrating deposits in that area, experts said yesterday at a workshop.
Bangladesh gained 598 square kilometres of new land in 35 years from 2008 in the Meghna estuary near Noakhali, said the experts of Bangladesh Water Development Board at the workshop. They said over the years Bangladesh lost 1,045 square km of land due to erosion and gained 1,642 square km of new land at the Meghna estuary. On an average year, Bangladesh gains 17.1 square km of land, they said at a technical session.
Around 10,000 hectares of new land could be reclaimed within the next couple of years, the experts said.
The seminar on Estuary Development Project was arranged at the Dhaka Sheraton Hotel yesterday. The Bangladesh government and the Netherlands are jointly implementing the project.
It was said that the water resources ministry constructed a ‘BWDB Task Force’ in 2002 to make recommendations on assisting and accelerating natural process of land accretion in the coast.
The taskforce recommended building 19 cross dams and constructing those in seven years.
Under the project, a multi-dam subproject called SUN will be implemented to connect vulnerable small island Sandwip with mainland Noakhali.
Between Sandwip and mainland Noakhali, two chars namely Urir Char and Jahajer Char, exist. The dams would link Sandwip with Urirchar and Noakhali.
“We have to reclaim more land from the coastal zone to face the pressure of increasing population and to ensure food security. The government is working on this issue,” said Water Resource Minister Ramesh Chandra Sen, who was the chief guest of the programme.
Engineer Humayun Kabir, chief engineer of the central zone of BWDB, presented the keynote paper.
Mahbubur Rahman, state minister for the ministry, and Shaikh Md Wahid-uz-Zaman, secretary to the ministry, were present as special guests. Habibur Rahman, director general of the BWDB, presided over the session.
