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 Taka 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 dumping.Under the project, Ashraful Haque, chief engineer of RCC, told BSS 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 concretized 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 urbanization.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 but 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 hoped that fish production will be enhanced together with protection of the endangered fish species from further extinction.Besides, he viewed that the developed water bodies will help the fire fighters and others concerned to extinguish any fire incident in the metropolis.Mosaddeque Hossain Bulbul, Mayor of RCC, said the project has been adopted to mitigate the adverse impact of climate change and hoped that it will get approval from the government as early as possible.RAJSHAHI, Feb 13, 2015 (BSS)
