Mirpur to get water from Savar
With a view to reducing the dependency on groundwater in Mirpur, which has suffered the largest fall in the water table compared to other areas in the capital, Dhaka Water Supply and Sewerage Authority (Wasa) has taken an initiative to bring 15 crore litres of water per day for the neighbourhood from nearby Savar.
Wasa now supplies to Mirpur around 30 crore litres daily, the demand of the area, and most of it comes from groundwater, said an official of Wasa.
He said the water which would be extracted from the aquifer of Tetuljhora-Bhakurta in Savar, outside the capital, would also meet the growing demands of Mirpur.
Every year, the groundwater level in the capital drops by one to three metres due to excessive extraction, he said.
Currently, Wasa supplies 22 percent of the water in Dhaka and Narayanganj cities from surface sources, mainly from the Shitalakkhya river. The rest is extracted from groundwater through 675 pumps, of which 87 are located in Mirpur.
According to the Bangladesh Water Development Board, the groundwater level in Mirpur fell 53.75 metres between 1991 and 2008, while the decline was 18.59 metres in Mohammadpur, 37.4 metres in Sabujbagh, 8.22 metres in Sutrapur, and 14.14 metres in Dhaka Cantonment areas during the same period.
Under the "Well field construction project at Tetuljhora-Bhakurta in Savar Upazila (Phase-1)", 46 production wells and 48km water transmission lines will be set up to extract groundwater and supply it to Mirpur.
A contract was signed between Wasa and South Korea's Hyundai Rotem Company in this regard at the capital's Sonargaon Hotel yesterday.
The project primarily costing Tk 521 crore will be completed by June 2016, said Nurul Islam, project director of Wasa.
"We plan to reduce the dependency on groundwater and Tetuljhora-Bhakurta is one of the big projects of Wasa," said Taqsem A Khan, managing director of Wasa, adding that they were also going to construct three water treatment plants by 2021.
The three new plants will raise the use of surface water to 70 percent by 2021, he said.
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