Chopping a branch you're sitting on!
More areas were inundated yesterday in Rajshahi's Mohanpur upazila due to the damaged embankment of the Shib river at Ghasigram village.
Meanwhile, in an unprecedented move, the local administration under the supervision of Water Development Board (WDB) started repairing the breeches with topsoil from the same embankment.
During a visit to the embankment at Dhuroil union yesterday noon, this correspondent found over a dozen of labourers cutting soil on a length of nearly 500 yards of the embankment and filling up plastic bags with the soil.
The WDB hoped to dump around 3,000 such soil-filled bags into the damaged portion of the levee.
Locals expressed concern over the move, saying cutting soil from the levee to repair its breaches will further damage it.
Prof Golam Sabbir Sattar of geology and mining department at Rajshahi University said cutting the topsoil of the embankment during rainy season will be quite another blow to the already damaged structure.
He also said the flooding was man-made as the flood control gates of the levee malfunctioned due to obstructions created by fishing nets set up by local fishermen.
“Filling bags with soil instead of sand is foolish,” he said, adding that soil particles are finer and more prone to being washed away than sand particles.
The WDB could dump stones or concrete blocks or sand-filled geotextile bags to control the flood water through the breaches in the levee, he said.
Most importantly, “any type of work on the embankment can be disastrous, because the levee is now vulnerable with water flowing on both its sides,” said Sattar, who wrote articles on the country's flood control activities.
However, Abdur Razzak, a WDB section officer present at the scene of the levee work yesterday, claimed, “It will not affect the embankment” as they were shaving off only 3 inches of the surface of the levee.
They had to use the soil since sand was not available in the closest vicinity, he said, adding that transporting sandbags within a short time was another obstacle.
Talking to this correspondent last night, the WDB official said they began piling bamboos in the breached portions of the embankment already and they will dump 6,000 more soil-filled polythene-sewn bags there once the piling work is complete.
Dhuroil Union Council Chairman Kajim Uddin expressed frustration over the WDB's cutting topsoil from the embankment instead of bringing in necessary materials to protect it. “It will create further risk in future. Locals are disappointed at the initiative.”
When all beels and low-lying areas of the entire upazila were flooded in the last 48 hours and agricultural farms, especially the betel leaf farms, incurred heavy losses, the WDB officials were not doing anything to control the situation, he alleged.
Yakub Ali, a betel leaf orchard owner from Gourangapur village, said, “Since planting of the betel leaf plants, it takes around five years of care before being able to reap harvest.”
Loss from a 10-katha betel leaf orchard could amount to Tk 10 lakh as years of investment is involved, said Muktar Hossain, an orchard owner from Baje Jol village.
Locals said betel leaves are among the main cash crops in the upazila.
Upazila nirbahi officer of Mohanpur, Shukla Sarker, said their previous estimation of flood affected croplands was 220 hectares and they would soon complete the assessment of fresh inundated areas.
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