Pollution, chronic encroachments choke River Bakkhali
Kamal Uddin, a senior resident in Cox's Bazar's Kasturighat area, said he used to see salt fields and forests along the banks of the River Bakkhali only a decade ago before pollution and encroachment by locals ruined it all.
Over the last decade, the riverside at Kasturighat and in other areas along Bakkhali has changed radically as silt, clay, garbage and other pollutants have choked the once vibrant river, the septuagenarian man said.
As the natural flow of water shrank at the bend of the river Kasturighat, a number of local influential individuals and their affiliated institutions filled up the riverside with sand and constructed various infrastructures illegally, Kamal told The Business Standard (TBS).
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The River Bakkhali, which is about 67 km long and was once 120 meters wide, is an important river in Cox's Bazar district. But due to encroachments, the width has been reduced to 50 meters in some places. In Kasturighat, the river flow has been almost cut off.
Abu Hena Mustafa Kamal, a resident of Maheshkhali and a professor at Malaysia's Universiti Malaysia Terengganu (UMT), has been studying the River Bakkhali for a long time.
He told TBS, "Salt marsh and seagrass are among the important components of this river's biodiversity. Pollution on the river surface began in Ramu and Bangla Bazar areas by municipal waste dumping stations. Even dredging operations to alleviate the navigability crisis have caused a lot of damage. The depth of the river has increased in some places but the ecosystem on both sides was left in peril."
Visiting the river banks firsthand, TBS has seen hundreds of structures illegally built in an area of about 18 kilometres on both sides of the River Bakkhali. The highest number of such structures was seen in the Kasturighat area. The Local Government Division has also constructed a bridge on the river.
Around 28 wooden jetties have been constructed over an area stretching from ghat number six to the North Nuniachhara, all of which are unauthorised.
In addition to extracting sand from the River Bakkhali, stones and sand from Sylhet were brought and sold to a total of five sale centres built illegally. Moreover, a few oil barges, ice mills, cold storage, fishing offices, educational institutions, dockyards, fish farms, dried fish (shutki) farms and hundreds of residences have been constructed on the river banks. A truck stand has also been set up next to ghat number six of the river.
According to locals, the sand-selling centres and other private establishments have been constructed by destroying hundreds of acres of artificial forest along the coast, at the cost of at least 40,000 bine and kewra trees and biodiversity including the habitat of 200 species of birds.
In addition to the illegal occupation, many locals are now claiming the river land as their own. A clique of unscrupulous officials of the district administration has somehow recorded several river lands in the 1990 Bangladesh Survey (BS).
A reign of illegal occupation
TBS sought the assistance of UN Remote Sensing Expert Dr Abu Rushed Jamil Mahmood to verify the issue of individual claims on river land and the gradual occupation of these lands.
Dr Jamil Mahmood analysed NASA Landsat images from 1985 and Google Earth images from 2004 to 2022. According to him, in 1985, there was a bend in the river in the Kasturighat area, which gradually disappeared by 2000. The river was choked and an area was created by the accumulation of silt and clay. This is the natural process of the river.
"Satellite images of December 2004 showed that tidal water used to enter the Kasturighat area. There were large salt fields and some mangrove trees at that time. That too has been destroyed by encroachment. In 2013, the municipality began encroaching on the river by starting garbage dumping along the banks, obstructing the flow of water," he said, adding that a widespread encroachment started after 2015.
Dr Jamil Mahmood termed the entire process, including river encroachment and infrastructure construction, as a classic example of damage caused to nature.
BIWTA's river port construction remains halted for a decade
Through a notification in 2010, the government appointed the BIWTA as the conservator of the Bakkhali river port. About 270 acres of land along the river banks were handed to the organisation but the district administration refused to give up the lands as many formal and informal economic transactions allegedly take place centring on river bank occupation, leasing and other activities.
With the land not handed over to the BIWTA, Maheshkhali citizen and Supreme Court lawyer Raihanul Mustafa filed a writ petition with the High Court in 2013. After the full hearing of the writ, in 2016, the High Court ordered the district administration to convey the land to the BIWTA within 60 days of the verdict. But the order was not implemented.
Later the LGRD ministry filed an appeal to the court challenging the verdict. The court dismissed the appeal in January this year, upholding the previous directive to convey the land to the BIWTA within 60 days.
Ineffective eviction drive
A list published by the BIWTA in 2020 identified 131 individuals and organisations as river occupiers, including public representatives, political figures, and businessmen.
The district administration and the BIWTA evicted only two structures during the drives on 28 February and 1 March. At that time, a local public representative obstructed the drive, claiming a river land of his own. Locals said the media drummed up drives, which were in reality only for show.
BIWTA Deputy Director (In Charge) Nayan Sheel told TBS, "We have repeatedly urged the administration to hand over the river land. Encroachment increased as the port could not be built. After the final verdict on 29 January, we hope that the administration will clear the land soon."
"We are ready to provide all kinds of support, including logistics to the administration if needed," he added.
When asked how the river lands were claimed by private citizens, Cox's Bazar Deputy Commissioner Muhammad Shaheen Imran told TBS, "It is difficult to find out how the river lands were recorded in the BS survey of 1990 after so many years. I have heard that the current occupiers went to court after the eviction drives. The rest will be decided by the court."
He also said that there is no obstacle to handing over the river port land to the BIWTA.
