Ahnaf writes*
With a staggering population of 23 million, Dhaka is the fourth most populous city in the world (World City Populations 2023). Located in the heart of the largest delta on Earth, Dhaka citizens often face severe insecurities when it comes to accessing safe drinking water.
Supplying safe drinkable water is one of the biggest challenges faced by the administrators of Dhaka. This issue is further exacerbated by the fact that the major rivers surrounding the city are some of the most heavily polluted in the world. One of the biggest causes behind the pollution of these rivers is the dumping of domestic waste and untreated sewage into the nearby rivers. Only 30% of the city’s sewage can be treated by the existing sewage infrastructure of the city (Sakib 2022). Along with sewage and household waste, heavy dumping of industrial waste has made Buriganga one of the most polluted rivers in the world (Bangladesh Post 2021).
The city’s water management board DWASA (Dhaka Water Supply and Sewerage Authority) lacks the infrastructure to supply safe drinking water to the city’s residents to the extent that 63% of the water supplied by DWASA has been found to contain E.Coli bacteria (The Third Pole 2015). This leads to thousands of deaths due to water related diseases such as cholera and diarrhea every year in the city. The condition is so bad that DWASA itself encourages its consumers to boil their water before drinking it (The Third Pole 2015).
The city has got ambitious plans to tackle these challenges. The city corporation is planning on the construction of 12 large Sewage Treatment Plants (STPs) over the next 20 years (MDPI.com 2023). These STPs will be used to prevent the untreated domestic waste from entering the nearby water bodies which will in turn improve the water quality of the rivers.
Other measures being taken to tackle the deteriorating water quality of Dhaka include nature-based solutions such as using natural elements such as green roofs and rain gardens to manage water within the city and lower flooding risk (World Bank 2020) since flooding and waterlogging within the city during the monsoon season causes water from sewage to get mixed with freshwater sources. Hence, this will help prevent or at least lower the contamination of freshwater sources during the monsoon season by decreasing waterlogging.
Bottom Line: Bangladesh is a developing country with its own water challenges, but Dhaka is planning — with help from international partners — to provide all residents with safe, drinkable water.
* Please help my Water Scarcity students by commenting on unclear analysis, alternative perspectives, better data sources, or maybe just saying something nice 🙂
This is a really interesting post! I think you have a good writeup analyzing the different factors affecting Dhaka’s water supply, and it raised a lot of points I wasn’t aware of. I’d be interested in learning more about the history of these failings- did the system break down over time? I’m also heartened to hear that there are efforts to address it. Hopefully these measures will increase water quality and safety for the residents, as well as improve the surrounding nature.
Hi Ahnaf, I enjoyed reading about future improvements and nature-based solutions (I now feel I was a bit too pessimistic in my blogpost and didn’t include anything about the future…). I found myself wondering about the role of the public in these changes — you spoke mainly of Dhaka’s management as well as help from international partners, but as we know, working with the citizens will lead to the most socially desirable outcome (since this takes into account the huge role that institutions have in any societal changes). So, my hope is that the citizens of Dhaka are being informed by their government and have an active role in the process, especially by partaking in the the implementation of nature-based solutions. Do you happen to know how much this is happening in reality?