Poisoning the population

Arsenic, salinity, iron and bacteria poison Bagerhat water

By Morshed Ali Khan, back from Bagerhat 

Photographs by Syeda Farhana

Arsenic, salinity, iron and bacterial pathogens have severely contaminated both the ground and surface water sources in the entire region of Bagerhat.

An Arsenic poisoned shallow tube-well still being used for washing (wadu) at a mosque at Ronobijoypur. The red colour has worn out with time.

Acute shortage of safe water in all the nine Upazilas (sub-divisions) of this historic town, 178 kilometers southwest of capital Dhaka, is exposing millions to various health hazards. Shortage of safe water is also changing the social pattern in the region with many families choosing to migrate elsewhere in the country. Bagerhat is one of the least populated districts in a country which has one of the highest population densities in the world.
The Civil Surgeon of Bagerhat, Dr. Arun Kumar Mondol, says that Bagerhat is rapidly becoming unlivable mainly due to Arsenic, rapid increases in salinity and iron levels in the water.
“Our 2015 survey in the nine Upazilas show 826 people suffering from ailments arising from severe Arsenic poisoning,” he adds.
“There is not much follow up on these cases other than counseling and offering some antioxidant vitamins free of cost,” he adds, “The population in this region is facing a slow poisoning.”
SM Shamim Ahmed, Executive Engineer, Department of Public Health Engineering (DPHE), in-charge of various arsenic mitigation programs, says the situation within his jurisdiction is critical. All the 12,930 shallow tube-wells at the depth of between 40 and 100 feet in the district have been painted red, marked for arsenic poisoning. Since 2003, the DPHE could only install 6258 tube-wells at the depth of between 700 and 1000 feet, tested to be arsenic free.
The DPHE tube-wells are for community use but in villages around Bagerhat, people allege that these are in the grip of influential households where access for the common people is restricted. The deep tube-well water is not so potable either. In many cases, water from these deep tube-wells is contaminated with salinity and a high iron count.
Hosneara Koli, a housewife from Ronobijoypur village and a mother of one child, says she fetches water from a community tube-well 200 meters away for drinking everyday. The sole tube-well serves over 100 families in the village.

Hosneara Koli and her daughter in front of their house.

“Cooking cannot be done with the water from the well because the rice and the curries turn black and look bad,” Koli says. “I have to depend on a small rainwater pond inside my house, water of which has to be purified with fitkeri (alum) a day before.”
Koli’s husband, Mansur Hossain Badol, a day laborer, says there are many villagers in the region, who sell water from their pond and make a living. He narrated how the hospitable culture of Bengal has changed in many places across the coastal belt due to persistent attacks by nature.
“We often travel to distant places for selling labor and in recent years I noticed that if three or four laborers walk into a homestead and request for some drinking water, the homeowner invariably expresses his inability,” Badol says, adding that unfortunately he would have to do the same if more than one person comes to his house for drinking water. “It is a big problem in Satkhira, Bagerhat, Khulna and everywhere in this region.”
The affluent families have homemade filters and they repeat the filtering process several times to ensure safety in their potable water.

Koli shows how she purifies her pond water with a piece of mineral called fitkeri or alum

While the crisis grows, so do the ideas for entrepreneurship. In Bagerhat and its vicinity, eleven water purification plants have mushroomed over the years. Interestingly, only one of these plants, SAFA Pure Drinking Water, complies with the rules and regulations overseen by about half a dozen government agencies.
SAFA’s owners are three working brothers who had worked in Japan for over two decades. Md Mostafizur Rahman Haru, the eldest of the brothers, says having returned from Japan they were alarmed to see the scarcity of water in the region.
“We thought of setting up this plant for mainly social welfare and we sell each container of 20 liters for Tk. 30. Now even a marginalized family can afford to buy a container of purified water,” Haru says.
“But we are worried because the groundwater level is dropping fast in the area and soon we may have to use a submersible pump to extract water from 860 feet below the ground,” he adds.

A worker carries out the final inspection on a water container at the Safa water purification centre

The Bagerhat Municipality area, comprising of about quarter of a million people, has set up piped lines to supply groundwater to households who pay municipal taxes. But residents reject the water as “unusable water” with extremely high levels of iron and salinity in it.
“Our water taps, metallic water pipes, showers and toiletries become heavily stained and choked with the water flowing in it within a few months,” says Rokshana Begum, a resident of Sadar road, adding,“ moreover the supply water comes once or twice a week only.”
The onslaught of salinity on the agricultural land of the region became so intense that a leading NGO, CODEC (Community Development Center) was in a dilemma over the distribution of free seeds to farmers in the Rampal area last year. The government of Netherlands had financed the project.
Dr Khurshid Alam, Executive Director of CODEC, told reportsbd.com that the farmers in Rampal could not benefit from the initiative due to the high traces of salinity in agricultural fields there.
“Prompted by last year’s failure, a Dutch farm, Dexel, is now running a pilot project with salt tolerant seeds,” he adds.

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Posted by Reportsbd on May 19 2016. Filed under Environment, Home Slide, Special Features. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry