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The water crisis in Bangladesh: a challenge to integrated water management in urban areas

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... The Ganges and its many primary, secondary, tertiary, quaternary and further downward streams that form the northwestern and southwestern riverine parts of Bangladesh are shown in Fig. 6 and 7. Some of these rivers are the Baral, the Musa Khan, the Mahananda, the Tista, the Punarbhaba, the Talma, the Tangon, the Karatoa, the Bangali, the Ghaghat, the Dhepa. These streams supplied the founding and sustaining lifeblood of the wetland ecosystem of northwestern Bangladesh up to 1975 when India started to pirate the water of the Bangladesh Gangetic ecosystem by constructing the Farakka Barrage across the Ganges and many tricks the details of which have appeared in the previous works (Adel, 1999b;1999d;2002;2004a;2004b;2005;2007;2008a;2008b;2008c;Adel and Husain, 2008;Adel, 2009;2012a;2012b;2012c;2012d;2012e;2013a;2013b;2013c;2013d;2013f;2013g;2013h;2014a;2014c;Miah, 1996a;1996b;1996cMiah, 19951989). ...
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ABSTRACT Since the 80’s, the northwestern and the southwestern parts of the tropical Bangladesh located in the downstream Ganges basin have been having summer temperature above 109°F and winter temperature as low as 37°F. Every year people, particularly, the infants die from heat-and cold-related diseases and hospitals become packed-up with the victims of severe climatic condition. The objective of this research is to find the reason for the appearances of the extreme climate in certain parts of the country. Water bodies being reservoirs of heat, the condition of the rivers and other surface water resources has been examined. It is found that the continued water piracy at the upstream from the downstream Bangladesh Ganges discharge, the major source of water for the northwestern and southwestern parts, has depleted surface ater resources and sunken the down the groundwater table. About 60% evaporation of the massively extracted groundwater to make up for the surface water shortage goes to merely increase the relative humidity without causing rainfall. Summer time lingering high temperature and high humidity cause the severity of summer weather. In the absence of the virgin surface water bodies, there is little room for storing heat for wintertime warming. The entire Ganges basin loses at least 10 times the heat it used to store in the water abundant days. Summertime maximum temperature, HDDs and CDDs are negatively and wintertime minimum temperature is positive correlated with the decline of the Ganges’s discharge. Indian Government has to decommission her dams and barrages to mitigate the sufferings of the downstream people in Bangladesh. The greatest implication of this research is the accountability of the anthropogenic actions-caused depleting inland water bodies through storing, distribution via multi-channeling, irrigation, industrial and domestic use, for the occurrences of global heating vis-à-vis cooling and not CO2 and other greenhouse gases accumulation in space. Immediate international actions are needed to end the episode.
... Hindustan Builders, the construction company of the Farakka Barrage, has (i) rendered numerous families destitute by affecting their livelihood, (ii) made an uncounted number of aquatics and amphibians extinct, (iii) snatched away downstream country's ecosystem's elixir water, (iv) contaminated the drinking water with arsenic poisoning, (v) made numerous suffer from arsenic contamination, (vi) been causing family break-offs, (vii) been causing one out of five deaths by arsenic poisoning, (viii) created people's malnutrition, (ix) rendered climate extreme and caused outbreaks of environmental diseases that takes a heavy toll, particularly, during the winter, (x) made people suffer from malnutrition, (xi) increased coastal erosion by diverting naturally depositable sediments to the India coast and causing inland deposition of sediment within the downstream country, (xi) caused inland intrusion of the saline water front. The internal immunity system of the downstream country has been broken down making a leeway for natural calamities like the increased occurrences of inland and Bay Bengal tornados that takes a heavy death toll and property loss as well as increased fatalities due to lighting strikes (Adel, 1999a(Adel, , 1999b(Adel, , 2000a(Adel, , 2000b(Adel, , 2001(Adel, , 2002(Adel, , 2003(Adel, , 2004a(Adel, , 2004b(Adel, , 2005(Adel, , 2008a(Adel, , 2008b(Adel, , 2008c(Adel, , 2012a(Adel, , 2012b(Adel, , 2013a(Adel, , 2013b(Adel, , 2013cMiah, 1996aMiah, , 1996bMiah, , 1996cMiah, , 1996dMiah and Samad, 1996;Rahman, 1997). ...
... Due to the piracy of the elixir water, many elements of the biotic system have been extinct and the rest are endangered. The ecocide effects in the Ganges basin include the loss of the surface 86 Upstream Water Piracy, the Strongest Weapon of Cornering a Downstream Nation water resources, destruction of the inland navigable routes, the depletion of the natural breeding and raising grounds of 109 species of Gangetic fishes and the natural wells for groundwater recharge, the alarmingly sinking of the groundwater table and its contamination with arsenic in the continued absence of the recharging surface water and the over-dependence on the groundwater, the sufferings of 75 million people from the risk of arsenicosis causing a 20% fatality, the break-off of family ties of arsenic patients, rising malnutrition among the people from the scarcity of fish, the cheapest sources of calcium and the indispensable animal protein, the loss of people's annual and seasonal livelihoods, the generation of extreme climate with an increased number of warmer summer days and colder winter days than before the beginning of the piracy in1975, scanty and erratic rainfalls, the loss of numerous biodiversity before the preparation of an inventory, coastal erosion, widespread inland advancement of saline water front, and the deterioration of the Ganges water quality (Miah, 1995(Miah, , 1996a(Miah, , 1996c(Miah, , 1996dMiah and Samad, 1996;Miah, 1997;Adel, 1999aAdel, , 1999bAdel, , 2000aAdel, , 2000bAdel, , 2001Adel, , 2002Adel, , 2003Adel, , 2004aAdel, , 2004bAdel, , 2005Adel, , 2008aAdel, , 2008bAdel, , 2012aAdel, , 2012bAdel, , 2013aAdel, , 2013bAdel, , 2013c, 2013d, 2013e) ...
... Farakka barrage was commissioned in 1974 to maintain navigability of the Culcatta port, India, and to divert the Ganges water into the Bhagirathi-Hoogly River through a feeder canal. The full capacity of the feeder canal is 1,133 m 3 /s (cms, cubic meters per second; Miah 1996). Because of the Farakka barrage, the Padma River flow rate has become very unsteady. ...
Article
The water and bed-sediment pollution status of the Padma River was determined by analysis of representative samples for selected metals and ions. Water and bed-sediment samples were collected at a T-dam, Rajshahi, Bangladesh, for 7 months. Water and silt-metal content analysis was performed using atomic absorption spectrophotometry or other analytical methods. The data showed the variation of the metal ion-levels in water as follows: Ca 17.11–48.37 ppm, Na 17.51–20.09 ppm, K 1.00–3.60 ppm, Cr 2.80–7.00 ppm, and SO4 4.17–5.48 ppm; in bed sediment, the levels were Cr 35–1050 ppm and Pb 12–48 ppm. The occurrence of Na, K and Ca was in the normal range (US EPA permissible limit), but the levels of Cr in water were much higher than the permissible limit. The SO4 ion content was well below the pollution level. The concentration of Pb in the bed sediment was within the permissible limit for the standard International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Soil-5a, but the concentration of Cr in the bed sediment was significantly higher than the permissible limit for the standard IAEA Soil-5a. Thus the Padma river water was polluted with Cr. The occurrence of some ions showed a monthly variation.
Article
India has built barrages on 17 more rivers in the east and northeast border with Bangladesh. Most of these dams and embankments act as the main barrier to flow water towards downstream like Bangladesh. As a result the rivers of Bangladesh that comes from India are falling in crisis of proper water. A study showed about 30 rivers of north-western part of Bangladesh gets very few water only due to dams and embankment made by India at the upstream of those rivers. Such massive water control projects of India are clearly a threat for a state that lies down of those. Unfortunately, and often ironically, national leaders of our country prefer to negotiate this sensitive matter rather than to make a strong protect of this inhuman and unethical activities. What is more astonishing news is that some time our state policy makers like to keep silent and avoid about it. India is always ready to controlling nature to serve economic development rather than addressing issues of trans-boundary and socio-environmental responsibilities. In fact, Indian plan to divert the water of Frontier Rivers is increasing at an alarming rate for Bangladesh. Here one thing is mentionable that is this types of project even harmful for India also. And peoples of north western state of India are in against of such harmful and high ambitious unnecessary project. Some time they also make a protest against it. Recently China and India are going to establish a large dam at the up Stream of Brahmaputra River. It would impair India’s own plan to link approximately thirty of its own rivers, a project that is bound to affect the downstream riparian state of Bangladesh. As a result drastic fall in the water flow of Teesta during the lean season, especially in February and March will occur in more frequent and will seriously hampers irrigation in Bangladesh. Such international trans-boundary river development projects raise many important issues. They never consider the impact that will impose upon the down stream part like Bangladesh. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3329/jsf.v8i1-2.14614 J. Sci. Foundation, 8(1&2): 1-12, June-December 2010
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