Safe drinking water
Re: “Water pipeline a blessing for Satkhira villagers” by Reaz Ahmad, Daily Star Monday April 5, 2010
The pipeline network scheme under the Bangladesh Water Supply Programme Project (BWSPP), funded by the World Bank and implemented by the Department of Public Health Engineering (DPHE) is a most welcome endeavour that will supply safe drinking water to hundreds of thousands of people in remote areas. What is also innovative is that this initiative is a public-private partnership. This approach of supplying safe water from a safe aquifer or arsenic free regions by a network of pipelines will assure safe drinking water to millions.
One point of caution is that the water supply from deeper tube wells may very well be free of arsenic but should still be tested for other toxic metals which may be present in deeper aquifers.
An additional solution could be rainwater harvesting which has shown promise and should be continued. It is also important to point out that domestic water treatment in various forms may give short-term relief but the handling and disposal of arsenic sludge in the long term remains an issue.
Previously, the cost of an extensive network of pipelines to supply safe water had been considered prohibitive. However, when one considers the amount of money spent for the arsenic mitigation efforts since 1993 perhaps the network could have been achieved by now. I was amazed to see the extensive network of pipelines traversing through all manner of terrain and major rivers, spreading throughout the country and bringing natural gas from Chittagong. I often wondered why such a system of safe water delivery from pre-designated sources and distribution centres could not be implemented to save lives of so many people.
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