No aquatic life in Buriganga River: POBA report
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22/01/2014
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New Age (Bangladesh)
A team of Save the Environment Movement officials inspects a spot at Shyampur in Dhaka on Tuesday to measure the extent of pollution in the water as chemical effluent falls into the River Buriganga. — Indrajit GhoshA team of Save the Environment Movement officials inspects a spot at Shyampur in Dhaka on Tuesday to measure the extent of pollution in the water as chemical effluent falls into the River Buriganga. — Indrajit Ghosh
There is no aquatic life in the highly polluted Buriganga River, a Poribesh Bachao Andalan report said Tuesday.
It said that pollution in the Buriganga took the unmistakable toll on aquatic life.
It said dissolved oxygen in the Buriganga River is nearly 0 mg a litre when aquatic life needs 5mg per litre to sustain.
An expert team from POBA collected and tested water samples from the Buriganga and found the river inhospitable to aquatic life.
POBA said it collected the water samples from different points from Sadarghat to Pagla.
According to the report, at Sadarghat dissolved oxygen level in the river was 0.40 mg/L, at Dhlaikhan -- 0.38 mg/L, at Postagola -- 0.55 mg/L, at Shyampur -- 0.62 mg/L, near the Pagla Treatment Plant --0.33 mg/L, and at Pagla Bazaar --0.30 mg/L.
The Environment Conservation Act 2007 states for fish and aquatic life to sustain needs dissolved oxygen level should be over 5mg/L, said POBA secretary general Md Abdus Sobhan who led the study.
The report said no aquatic life could survive in the polluted Buriganga waters.
Sobhan said that the study team saw none fishing in the Buriganga.
At Shyampur, he said, textile mills, dyeing factories and washing plants from the DND area were seen discharging untreated coloured liquid wastes into the Buriganga.
He said that household wastes were dumped at different points of the Buriganga River.
Bearly 12.50 lakh cubic meter of the capital city’s sewage is directly discharged into the Buriganga each day, he said.
And the Hazaribagh tanneries discharge 21,000 cubic meters of untreated wastes in to the Buriganga each day, he said.
Poba joint general secretary Syed Monowar Hossain and coordinator Atiq Murshed attended the report presentation.