Sewage leaking to the surface - an urgent problem of Dhaka
Sewage leaking to the surface
Faizul Khan Tanim finds out how Dhaka’s inadequate sewerage system threatens to destroy the city’s environment
photo by Al-Emrun Garjon
photo by Al-Emrun Garjon
I step out of my house looking for a ride to the office at Karwan Bazar. I need to walk a certain distance to get to the bus stop or taxi stand, and I have to get across dirty water to get transport most of the time. Vehicles passing by have no sympathy towards pedestrians as they speed over the reeking sewage water spraying all over me. On number of occasions, I needed to go back home, change clothes and make a fresh start. Imagine the time wasted on a busy weekday.
This is how Gulshan-1 resident Kader Khan describes a typical morning in a city with a sewerage system in desperate need of upheaval. His voice is one of the many belonging to residents of Gulshan, Banani, Uttara, Tejgaon, Moghbazar, various parts of Old Dhaka and other areas who complain that the stench caused by continuous sewage water overflow or leak at random points along the road is unbearable, not to mention the health and hygiene hazards.
Another resident from Uttara, Abu Zafar, says, ‘This sewer leakage problem was once confined to the main streets, but it has now spread to alleys and by-lanes in not only our area but Banani, Gulshan and Tejgaon as well.’
‘With the Water and Sewerage Authority (WASA) failing to clean up regularly, the sewer lines have waste piling up to a point that it has started to seep out through the manhole covers,’ he adds.
The residents also alleged that the manhole covers on many roads have been missing for a long time.
WASA officials, environmentalists, and urban planners said this sewer leakage is due to the lack of proper sewerage system infrastructure in Dhaka, and its capacity, which is insufficient due to excessive construction of multi-storey buildings and of course manhole covers being stolen at regular intervals.
A senior WASA official says that the sewerage system covers only a third of Dhaka’s area, meaning the remaining two-thirds still use the septic tank to remove toilet waste. The number of canals in place to deal with sewage is 29, down from the 42 present during British rule.
Only the part of Dhaka inside the flood protection embankment area, which is 136 km long, is served by the WASA sewerage network or the WASA drainage system.
Environmentalists claim the septic tank systems in the unsupported areas are only cleaned at specific times and the waste is mostly channeled to the nearby lakes, making the lake water heavily toxic and carcinogenic with the introduction of household, medical and industrial waste.
‘Dhaka City State of Environment,’ jointly published by the Department of Environment, Bangladesh Centre for Advanced Studies (BCAS) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) says that the overflow of sewerage occurs due to damaged sewerage lines and manholes, ineffective design of existing sewerage system, inadequate monitoring of the system, pipes smaller in diameter than required size and excessive flow of sewage from high-rise buildings into a system that had not been designed to accommodate the current increased sewage flow.
‘For example, suburbs like Gulshan, Banani, Baridhara do not yet have any proper sewerage system,’ says the WASA official.
‘The surface sewerage system of Gulshan was built in 1975 and after that no major renovation took place except occasional cleaning and building of extension pipes in the alleys. But meanwhile, multi-storey buildings kept mounting and a huge pressure fell on the existing sewer system from 30 years back,’ he adds.
The official explains that the main sewerage line from Gulshan-1 to Gulshan- 2 has a diameter of 18 inches but the pipes along the alleys are only eight inches. Pipelines of these diameters were installed in 1975 to cater to single or two-storied buildings present at that time, without provisions for today’s multi-storied buildings.
The official added more that sewerage, when built, has to be able to hold on for 20 years taking into consideration the increasing population and buildings. In addition, the system has to go through constant maintenance, which Dhaka’s system has not, resulting in this situation.
The study also says that Dhaka City Corporation’s underground and surface drainage systems are meant for storm water drainage and have nothing to do with sewerage overflow.
The overflow occurs through Dhaka WASA’s domestic sewerage system due to its inadequacy, lack of maintenance and submergence during floods.
However, in Dhaka city, though the storm water drainage system and domestic sewerage system are separate, there are numerous illegal connections of domestic sewerage to the storm drains.
The WASA official says, ‘One of the main reasons WASA has not been very successful because the sewerage system was handed over to WASA in 1991 and that is not very long ago.’
It was previously under the control of the department of public health.
‘Even now, the main drainage lines belong to WASA but the surface drainage system, the lines running on the by-lanes and alleys are still maintained by the City Corporation’, the official added.
According to WASA sources, a new 8.5 km drainage system has been installed in Uttara, Bashabo and Mirpur, 150 km of drainage line has been cleaned, 13 canals have been retrieved from illegal extortion activities and more has been done to improve the present system.
WASA engineers said that sewers are of two categories: strong and sanitary. Most of the time, household waste like polythene, plastic and materials that do not dissolve in water clog the strong sewer lines.
Thus, the pressure is on the sanitary sewer lines, which are already under pressure from the high density of passing human feces.
Professor Nurul Islam Nazem of the Centre for Urban Studies says, ‘Although a proper sewerage system is extremely capital-intensive, we must have it.’
‘Sometimes, proper installation of sewerage is difficult because of the narrow streets which have almost all the utility lines jumbled up. The manhole covers are missing most of the time, which is why waste overflows, and some residents just dump their waste randomly and, in the process, clog the lines,’ Nurul Islam adds.
‘The ideal sewerage system for Dhaka should be a hierarchical one with different diameters of pipe carrying the waste from houses and finally discharging them into lagoons with treatment plants outside the city,’ he concludes.
Kazi Golam Hafiz, an urban planning team leader and consultant for Development Design Ltd and a retired chief town planner of Rajuk says, ‘It is believed that one of the main reasons for civilizations like Mohenjodaro and Harappa to collapse was the lack of proper sewerage system.’
‘More treatment plants should be built around Dhaka and a more stable sewerage system should be installed to effectively discharge the sewer wastes and this whole system should be maintained by WASA, as they are the water and sewerage authority,’ he says.
This is how Gulshan-1 resident Kader Khan describes a typical morning in a city with a sewerage system in desperate need of upheaval. His voice is one of the many belonging to residents of Gulshan, Banani, Uttara, Tejgaon, Moghbazar, various parts of Old Dhaka and other areas who complain that the stench caused by continuous sewage water overflow or leak at random points along the road is unbearable, not to mention the health and hygiene hazards.
Another resident from Uttara, Abu Zafar, says, ‘This sewer leakage problem was once confined to the main streets, but it has now spread to alleys and by-lanes in not only our area but Banani, Gulshan and Tejgaon as well.’
‘With the Water and Sewerage Authority (WASA) failing to clean up regularly, the sewer lines have waste piling up to a point that it has started to seep out through the manhole covers,’ he adds.
The residents also alleged that the manhole covers on many roads have been missing for a long time.
WASA officials, environmentalists, and urban planners said this sewer leakage is due to the lack of proper sewerage system infrastructure in Dhaka, and its capacity, which is insufficient due to excessive construction of multi-storey buildings and of course manhole covers being stolen at regular intervals.
A senior WASA official says that the sewerage system covers only a third of Dhaka’s area, meaning the remaining two-thirds still use the septic tank to remove toilet waste. The number of canals in place to deal with sewage is 29, down from the 42 present during British rule.
Only the part of Dhaka inside the flood protection embankment area, which is 136 km long, is served by the WASA sewerage network or the WASA drainage system.
Environmentalists claim the septic tank systems in the unsupported areas are only cleaned at specific times and the waste is mostly channeled to the nearby lakes, making the lake water heavily toxic and carcinogenic with the introduction of household, medical and industrial waste.
‘Dhaka City State of Environment,’ jointly published by the Department of Environment, Bangladesh Centre for Advanced Studies (BCAS) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) says that the overflow of sewerage occurs due to damaged sewerage lines and manholes, ineffective design of existing sewerage system, inadequate monitoring of the system, pipes smaller in diameter than required size and excessive flow of sewage from high-rise buildings into a system that had not been designed to accommodate the current increased sewage flow.
‘For example, suburbs like Gulshan, Banani, Baridhara do not yet have any proper sewerage system,’ says the WASA official.
‘The surface sewerage system of Gulshan was built in 1975 and after that no major renovation took place except occasional cleaning and building of extension pipes in the alleys. But meanwhile, multi-storey buildings kept mounting and a huge pressure fell on the existing sewer system from 30 years back,’ he adds.
The official explains that the main sewerage line from Gulshan-1 to Gulshan- 2 has a diameter of 18 inches but the pipes along the alleys are only eight inches. Pipelines of these diameters were installed in 1975 to cater to single or two-storied buildings present at that time, without provisions for today’s multi-storied buildings.
The official added more that sewerage, when built, has to be able to hold on for 20 years taking into consideration the increasing population and buildings. In addition, the system has to go through constant maintenance, which Dhaka’s system has not, resulting in this situation.
The study also says that Dhaka City Corporation’s underground and surface drainage systems are meant for storm water drainage and have nothing to do with sewerage overflow.
The overflow occurs through Dhaka WASA’s domestic sewerage system due to its inadequacy, lack of maintenance and submergence during floods.
However, in Dhaka city, though the storm water drainage system and domestic sewerage system are separate, there are numerous illegal connections of domestic sewerage to the storm drains.
The WASA official says, ‘One of the main reasons WASA has not been very successful because the sewerage system was handed over to WASA in 1991 and that is not very long ago.’
It was previously under the control of the department of public health.
‘Even now, the main drainage lines belong to WASA but the surface drainage system, the lines running on the by-lanes and alleys are still maintained by the City Corporation’, the official added.
According to WASA sources, a new 8.5 km drainage system has been installed in Uttara, Bashabo and Mirpur, 150 km of drainage line has been cleaned, 13 canals have been retrieved from illegal extortion activities and more has been done to improve the present system.
WASA engineers said that sewers are of two categories: strong and sanitary. Most of the time, household waste like polythene, plastic and materials that do not dissolve in water clog the strong sewer lines.
Thus, the pressure is on the sanitary sewer lines, which are already under pressure from the high density of passing human feces.
Professor Nurul Islam Nazem of the Centre for Urban Studies says, ‘Although a proper sewerage system is extremely capital-intensive, we must have it.’
‘Sometimes, proper installation of sewerage is difficult because of the narrow streets which have almost all the utility lines jumbled up. The manhole covers are missing most of the time, which is why waste overflows, and some residents just dump their waste randomly and, in the process, clog the lines,’ Nurul Islam adds.
‘The ideal sewerage system for Dhaka should be a hierarchical one with different diameters of pipe carrying the waste from houses and finally discharging them into lagoons with treatment plants outside the city,’ he concludes.
Kazi Golam Hafiz, an urban planning team leader and consultant for Development Design Ltd and a retired chief town planner of Rajuk says, ‘It is believed that one of the main reasons for civilizations like Mohenjodaro and Harappa to collapse was the lack of proper sewerage system.’
‘More treatment plants should be built around Dhaka and a more stable sewerage system should be installed to effectively discharge the sewer wastes and this whole system should be maintained by WASA, as they are the water and sewerage authority,’ he says.
BAD ODOUR
Sewerage system only covers one third of city area Maintenance of the sewerage system shared between WASA and DCC causing lack of coordination Numerous illegal connections of domestic sewerage lines to the storm drains causing sewage overflow It is believed that one of the main reasons for civilizations like Mohenjodaro and Harappa to collapse was the lack of a proper sewerage system The main sewerage lines have a diameter of 18 inches while the pipes along the alleys are only eight inches. Pipelines were installed in 1975 to cater to single or two-storied buildings.
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