Water board puts Padma Barrage benefit at Tk 7,127 crore a year; state minister says visible work to be inaugurated in February

Once implemented, the government's master project, the Padma Barrage, will make planned water storage possible, according to the Bangladesh Water Development Board (BWDB) under the Ministry of Water Resources. By the board's calculation, once the barrage is operational the country will gain economic benefits totalling Tk 7,127 crore a year, including an increase of about 250,000 tonnes a year in fish production.

Giving the latest update on the project, State Minister for Water Resources Farhad Hossain Azad told BSS that work on the Padma Barrage began long ago and that a separate office for the project has been provided at Pani Bhaban. He said they inspected the project site at Habashpur in Pangsha, Rajbari, on September 11, and visited the proposed barrage area at Satbaria Kanchanpark in Sujanagar upazila of Pabna on October 25.

The state minister said progress on the barrage is gaining further momentum. If all goes well, the prime minister will inaugurate the visible work of the Padma Barrage next February, he said.

The Padma Barrage project was approved on May 13 at a meeting of the ECNEC committee chaired by Prime Minister Tarique Rahman. The government approved Tk 34,497 crore for the project, to be financed entirely from the government's own funds, although costs will rise further in the second phase. Construction began in July this year and is scheduled to finish in June 2033.

The Planning Commission has said building the Padma Barrage is one of the BNP government's election pledges. The barrage is being built mainly to store monsoon water and supply it in a controlled way in the dry season, so that agriculture, the environment and the economy of the southwestern region are protected and the dry-season water crisis is eased.

The main structure will be built in Pangsha upazila of Rajbari. It will include a 2.1-kilometre main Padma barrage, 78 spillway gates, 18 undersluices, two fish passes, a navigation lock, guide bundhs and approach bundhs. The barrage is planned to store about 2,900 million cubic metres of water and will have arrangements to generate 113 megawatts of hydropower.

State Minister Farhad Hossain Azad said that once implemented, about 70 million people in 120 upazilas of 19 districts across four divisions will benefit directly, with a major positive impact on agriculture and the economy. The project description also says irrigation will be ensured on about 2.88 million hectares of farmland in the greater Kushtia, Faridpur, Jessore, Khulna, Barisal, Pabna and Rajshahi regions.

In its first phase the project will be implemented in Kushtia, Meherpur, Chuadanga, Jhenaidah, Magura, Jessore, Narail, Bagerhat, Khulna and Satkhira of Khulna division; Rajbari, Faridpur and Gopalganj of Dhaka division; Pabna, Rajshahi, Natore, Naogaon and Chapainawabganj of Rajshahi division; and Pirojpur of Barisal division. Restoring the flow and navigability of major rivers including the Hisna-Mathabhanga, Gorai-Madhumati, Chandana-Barashia, Baral and Ichamati, and reducing salinity in the Satkhira, Khulna and Bagerhat areas, are among its main goals.

Describing the crisis behind the project, the report notes that after India built the Farakka barrage in West Bengal in the 1970s and diverted water in the dry season, the flow of the Padma in Bangladesh fell drastically. As a result, the Hisna-Mathabhanga, Gorai-Madhumati, Chandana-Barashia, Ichamati and Baral rivers of the southwest and northwest are now nearly dead, silt deposits have raised salinity, and with no capacity to hold monsoon water, settlements in these areas are hit by floods.

The report adds that salinity in the rivers and canals of the southwest has risen alarmingly, leaving coastal people without even drinking water in the dry season. Unable to get irrigation water, farmers are pumping groundwater by machine, which is lowering the water table and increasing arsenic. Falling fish production in the dying rivers has left many fishermen jobless, and the biodiversity of the Sundarbans is also being harmed. Meanwhile, the Ganges water-sharing treaty signed between Bangladesh and India on December 12, 1996, is set to expire this December.

According to the Water Development Board, the Bangladesh stretch of the Padma is about 341 kilometres long. Over the past two decades, river erosion has swallowed an estimated 8,000 to 10,000 hectares of farmland in Padma-eroded areas, and an average of 10,000 to 15,000 families in the riverside districts face a direct erosion risk every year. Experts say regular dredging, bank-protection embankments and flow management could cut the erosion rate by 30 to 50 percent.

Professor Mashfiqus Saleheen of BUET's Institute of Flood Control and Water Management told BSS that high salinity has created a drinking-water crisis in the southwest and that salinity and waterlogging will increase further in the region, including the Sundarbans. Maximum supply and flow of fresh water will therefore be needed there, and the Padma Barrage will play a big role. But he cautioned that during construction the river's natural flow, silt deposition, erosion, upstream river scouring and environmental balance must be monitored with great care.

State Minister for Cultural Affairs Ali Newaz Mahmud Khaiyam, who also chairs the national committee for implementing the Padma Barrage and the second Padma bridge, told BSS that because of the Farakka barrage one-third of the country's land is being harmed, with negative effects on navigation, safe drinking water and the Sundarbans' biodiversity. He said the Padma Barrage initiative was first taken by Shaheed President Ziaur Rahman and again by former prime minister Begum Khaleda Zia around 2004, but it could not be implemented then. In State Minister Farhad Hossain Azad's words, once the barrage is built the people of the southwest will enter a golden age and several hundred thousand jobs will be created.