Eco-friendly river water treatment plant at arsenic-prone Baroghoria
Brotee, a national-level non-government organisation, has installed an eco-friendly river water treatment plant at arsenic-prone Baroghoria union under Chapainawabganj Sadar upazila to ensure pure drinking water for local people.
The NGO has installed the plant to treat the water of the river Mahananda to provide pure drinking water for 1,200 families of Chamagram, Laharpur and Laxmipur where arsenic and iron make water unfit for human consumption.
The villagers would be able to get pure water from the plant by paying Tk 100 to Tk 120 per month. What they need is to take connections from the pipeline network set up along the main roads of the villages.
The pilot project has been implemented under a public-private partnership. The plant uses a Slow Sand Filter (SSF) machine to purify the river water after sedimentation and filtration in Up-flow Roughing Filter (URF) technology.
Sharmeen Murshid, chief executive director of Brotee, said this at a press conference at Dhaka Reporter's Unity in the city yesterday.
A total of 150 families have already taken connections from the plant to get pure drinking water, she added.
Sharmeen said Social Development Foundation of Finance Ministry assisted Brotee to install the plant, which has a production capacity of 3,00,000 litres of water a day.
Baroghoria was first identified as an arsenic-affected area in 1993, but no initiative was taken to make the area arsenic-free. So, Brotee took a step to provide safe drinking water in the localities, she added.
The 15-year project was launched to help the local people's access to safe drinking water, said M Masud, director of Brotee.
Prof Amir Hossain Khan, chief scientist of Plasma Plus Research Laboratory, and Dr Atiq Rahman, executive director of Bangladesh Centre for Advanced Studies, also spoke at the press conference.
Prof Amir, also a consultant scientist of Brotee, said: “I have visited the project area and examined about the quality of the water of the plant. The good side of the plant is that it does not need to use any chemical to purify water, which is really good for health.”
Dr Atiq said this eco-friendly plant would be installed in other villages where pure water crisis is so acute due to arsenic and other contamination of water.
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