Rajshahi City Corporation (RCC) has planned to conserve 53 natural
water-bodies in the city in order to retain its surface water
resources for protecting the environment from further degradation.
The city corporation has adopted a Tk 206.24-crore uplift project
titled “Natural Water Bodies Conservation and Development in Rajshahi
City” to attain the cherished goal side by side with protecting the
ponds from further degradation.
Under the project, Ashraful Haque, chief engineer of RCC, said that 53
ponds, at least one or more ponds in each of the city’s total 30
wards, will be preserved and 98 acres of land will be acquired for the
purpose. None would be allowed to fill up the ponds.
Embankments of the ponds will be constructed with concrete with
retaining wall besides necessary excavation and re-excavation. In
addition to bench and walkway, concrete stair will be constructed in
all the developed ponds to make those attractive among the nearby
people and facilitate them to enjoy and use those suitably.
Engineer Ashraful Haque said there were 729 ponds and canals in the
metropolis in 2002, but the figure was declined to 393 at present due
to indiscriminate earth- dumping and unplanned urbanisation.
Due to abnormal declining of surface water, he said dependence on
groundwater has been increasing for ensuring of supply water to the
city dwellers causing unusual lowering of groundwater table for the
last couple of years.
The situation becomes worse during the dry season leaving most of the
hand-driven tubewell inoperative. “We have no way to conserve the
surface water resources from all sorts of depletion to make the
groundwater table intact,” he opined.
Upon successful implementation of the project, he, however, hoped that
fish production will be enhanced together with protection of the
endangered fish species from further disappearance.
Besides, he viewed that the developed water bodies will help the fire
fighters and others concerned to extinguish any fire incident in the
metropolis.
Shariful Islam Babu, Mayor-in-Charge of RCC, said the project has been
adopted to mitigate the adverse impact of climate change and hoped
that it will get approval of the government as early as possible.
-BSS, Rajshahi
