Many state-run factories and industrial zones dispose untreated chemical waste into the rivers resulting in adverse impact on aquatic life and public health. Department of environment and BIWTA officials said some of the state-run factories do not have effluent treatment plants or are equipped with almost redundant technologies for treating chemical waste. Even those with modern ETPs and central effluent treatment plants, officials said, do not use them as errant officials responsible for operating these plants misappropriate funds allocated for treatment. DoE laboratory director Md Alamgir said an estimated Tk 34 can be saved by disposing off one cubic metre untreated effluent. ‘At this rate, Tk 30 lakh to Tk 40 lakh can be misappropriated.’ But DoE officials have no data about hundreds of private industries, mostly dyeing and washing factories, who dispose untreated effluents into the rivers for reducing production cost. They cannot even give data on the volume of domestic sewage, solid waste and hospital waste disposed everyday into the rivers. The responsibility for monitoring and controlling such activities fall on shoulders of city corporations, pourasavas and Wasa, Alamgir said. National River Conservation Commission chairman Md Atharul Islam said, ‘None of the responsible agencies are working to control river pollution.’ Even after formation of the river conservation task force, he said, LGRD, water resources ministry, shipping ministry, land ministry, environment ministry and their relevant agencies still suffer from lack of coordination. ‘The industries ministry should also play an active role in controlling pollution,’ said Atharul Islam, adding that industrial and domestic waste pollute rivers across the country in equal measure. Rivers flowing near the cities, he said, are most vulnerable to pollution and encroachment. WASA and city corporations cannot avoid responsibility for not developing sewage and dumping systems, as a result domestic waste make up half of the waste dumped into the four Dhaka rivers, he said. Each day an estimated 200 crore litre domestic sewage, generated at the centre of the city, fall into the four rivers flowing around the capital, according to Dhaka Wasa officials. Untreated domestic and industrial waste draw biological and chemical oxygen double the acceptable limit, depleting the dissolved oxygen levels to zero when the standard for DO parameter is 6, according to DoE data. The result is odorous pitch black waters for which no aquatic life can survive in Buriganga, Shitalakhhya, Balu and Turag during the four months of the dry season, said officials at Bangladesh Inland Water Transport Authority, Department of Environment and Department of Fisheries. DoE director Alamgir said he fined local and foreign officials responsible for operating CETPs at Dhaka Export Processing Zone, Chittagong Export Processing Zone and Comilla Export Processing Zone. ‘We also fined local and foreign companies located in other EPZs for not using or manipulating them,’ Alamgir said. He also said state-run and private sugar mills and factories located at BSIC industrial zones were also fined in recent times. ‘Karpnahuli Paper Mill has no ETP and fertilizer factories owned by BCIC have not been upgraded for proper treatment,’ he said. ‘Over 75 percent of the private factories located at Savar and Tongi have ETPs but most of these factories do not use them after midnight,’ Alamgir said. It’s not easy to identify the culprits as they use common outlets points, he said. Of the 500 tanneries located in Hazaribagh only Apex has an ETP, while 80 out of 360 factories located in Narayanganj have no ETP, said DoE officials adding that industrial clusters at Kamrangirchar and DND areas have no ETPs also. BIWTA last year prepared a list of 250 polluting points at four rivers identified by port offices at Sadarghat, Narayanganj and Tongi. They identified sewerage lines of WASA, water development board and city corporations, BSCIC industrial park at Tongi, Adamjee EPZ, big private factories such as City Group, Shah Cement, ACI Flour Mill, Amber Pal Paper Mill, Ananta Paper Mill and a dozens of washing and dyeing factories, as major pollutants. Port officials said no action has been taken so far to stop those outlets despite the list having been delivered to the responsible agencies such as DoE, city corporations, Dhaka Zila Parishad, Wasa and water development board. BGMEA and BKMEA leaders said many dyeing and washing factories could not install ETPs for space constraints. ‘An estimated three cent per yard can be saved if a dyeing factory does not use ETP,’ said a former FBCCI president preferring anonymity. DWASA’s deputy managing director Quamrul Alam Chowdhury said Wasa prepared a master plan for a sewage line. ‘We are installing a sewage treatment plant at Dasherkandi and will also install three more plants at Uttara, Mirpur and Rayerbazar.’ BCIC chairman Mohammad Iqbal said they improved ETP at Shahjalal Fertilizer project and were developing ETP at Jamuna Fertilizer Company according to DoE suggestion. ‘There is no ETP at Karnaphuli Paper Mill but we are not dumping waste into the rivers,’ he said. BSCIC general manager Md Mahbubul Alam said 56 factories of their industrial zones, 50 per cent of which are located near Dhaka, do not have any ETP. ‘We cannot provide land to many such factories at Tongi to install ETP,’ he said. BEPZA general manager Ahsan Kabir said BEPZA installed CETP in three out of its nine zones, which are operated by outsourcing companies. ‘It is the duty of DoE to monitor those CETPs and ETPs.’ Industries secretary M Mosharraf Hossain Bhuiyan said all the responsible agencies were instructed to use ETPs. ‘If they face any problem we will solve them immediately.’
