Ground Water in Dhaka City Essay

Dhaka is the capital city of Bangladesh which has a population of about 12. 5 millions and its population rate is over 5%. Projected population is about 22 million by 2025. Dhaka is now the 7th largest populated city in the world and it is anticipated that Dhaka will be the 2nd largest city in the world by 2020. This city is full of problem and one of the major problems is water crisis. Although Bangladesh is rich in water resource, but there remains lack of safe water. The cities in Bangladesh are the centre of employment, communications and development. So, people are rapidly migrating in these cities from rural areas place putting additional pressure on the infrastructure and water resources. For this huge population in Dhaka city, water demand is also huge. And maximum portion of this greater demand is fulfilled by ground water. The daily requirement of water in Dhaka city is about 200 crore liters while WASA supplies 180 crore liters, leaving a shortage of 20 crore liters. Out of this 180 crore liters of water, 154. 50 crore liters of water are supplied from ground water. All most 85%-87% of water is supplied from under the ground and of them are from surface water. To supply this massive amount of water we need to extract a lot from the ground. Everyday demand for water is increasing and we are adding new pumps. In 1998, there were only 243 water pumps to lift water in 2004 it was 440 but now it is 560. Each of the pumps lifts 3,000 liters of water in a minute. And this is also making some problems. For this heavy extraction water level is going down rapidly. In some statistics I have found that the level of underground water has dropped down to 61. 18 meters. The average rate of decline of water level varied from 1 m to 2. 50 as the report of DWDB. Ground water depletion situation is severe in the central part of the city compare to the areas close to river bank, says DWDB. If this continue to happen then in future it will be hard to lift up underground water. Moreover, the increasing number of pumps and subsequent depletion of groundwater table increases the risk of disasters like landslide, subsidence and earthquake.