Is this the price of development?

Infograph: TBS

Imagine Chattogram before it was hit by the wave of development over the last decade.

The particular city landscape actually has a distinctive geological character favourable to quick rainwater retention. Put simply, it has hills connected to flat lands, beels connected to those flat lands, canals connected to the beels, a river connected to the canals and the river flows into an ocean.  

We know that water always goes downward. So rainfall over the hill drains down to the ocean after travelling through the entire wetland ecosystem. In case there was heavy rainfall and high tides, the excess water was deposited in the beel area, which is basically a flood basin. 

Over the last 10 years, the Chattogram city landscape has basically received a facelift. 

The government has invested heavily in mega infrastructure projects – including the Bahaddarhat Flyover, Chattogram Elevated Expressway, Outer Ring Road, the Bayezid Link Road, the Bangabandhu Tunnel, Chattogram-Cox's Bazar rail link and many more. 

An estimation suggests that the government invested  Tk1,20,000 crore for the facelift. 

And yet, look at Chattogram now.   

Incessant rain over the last couple of days submerged almost 60% of the port city Chattogram, disrupting the city's life and economic activities. 

A college student Nipa Palit drowned and died after falling into a submerged drain. Several vehicles, both motorised and non-motorised broke down in the water. Dirty runoffs flooded hundreds of ground floors and also contaminated reserve water tanks and other water sources. 

The heavy rainfalls caused a hill slide in the Tiger Pass area. And then there are unprecedented levels of city dwellers' suffering be it because of inundated homes and/or roads. 

A rough estimation suggests that the water logging is causing a loss of Tk100 crore a day to the business communities.  

If we take stock of the last decade, we see how the heavy downpours-related water logging emerged and in phases, becomes a perennial problem for city dwellers. The government, so far, has taken projects involving Tk15,000 crore to bring respite from the impact of heavy rainfalls. 

However, the city dwellers have yet not seen any respite. 

Between 1 and 9 August this year, Bangladesh Meteorological Department recorded 727mm rainfalls in Chattogram, while 7 August witnessed the highest 322mm rainfalls. 

Concerned citizens including some independent city planners, however, don't see any hope with the ongoing development projects, citing them as inefficient to adapt to heavy rainfalls on the city. Because the city has already witnessed tactless infrastructural development ignoring its natural setup. 

Money down the drain

For the last eight years, three government organisations – the Chattogram Development Authority (CDA), Bangladesh Water Development Board (BMDB) and the Chattogram City Corporation (CCC) – have been implementing at least four projects involving Tk15,000 crore to bring respite from the impact of heavy rainfalls. 

CDA has been implementing a Tk9,526 crore project scheduled to end in December this year. The project involves reclaiming 36 canals and constructing 176km of retaining walls, 45 bridges, drains and footpaths. 

So far, the project has progressed at around 80%. At a cost of Tk2,746 crore, CDA has also been implementing the construction of an embankment from Kalurghat Bridge to Chaktai Canal alongside the Karnaphuli River. The project, scheduled to end in June 2024, has made progress of around 70%.

While BWDB's project, involving Tk1,620 crore, is to reduce flood and water-logging in Chattogram. In the last four years, the project has progressed only around 30%. The CCC's Tk 1,362 project to dig a canal from the Baroipara area to the Karnaphuli River has not been completed even in nine years.

"We have doubt that the drainage projects hardly have the retention capacity to drain out heavy rainfalls if there is high tide in the full moon," said architect Ador Yousuf, an Executive Committee Member at the Chattogram chapter of the Institute of Architects, Bangladesh (IAB). 

Fatalities of unplanned master plans 

Citing the sluice gates erected under the CDA's Tk9,526 crore project, Yousuf said the pathway of rainwater retention seems totally unplanned. "Especially at the mouth of one canal where it meets the River Karnaphuli, the sluice gates would fail to drain out excessive runoffs in the time of high tide," Yousuf, an International Academy of Architecture (IAA) award-winning architect, asserted. 

He added that one of the major causes of the city's water logging is unplanned urbanisation across the low-lying lands. The areas include Agrabad, Halishahar, Bakalia, Mohara, Khatunganj and Chaktai. The city development authorities have failed to control the land cover change as well as facilitating such unplanned development by themselves.  

"Naturally, a low-lying land or beel carries the excessive runoffs. But several new towns have developed there. The CDA itself developed housing projects including Kalpolok and Ananya on beel areas without developing a proper drainage network there," explained Yousuf. 

A recent study titled Spatio-temporal change analysis of wetlands in Chittagong (now Chattogram) city corporation by remote sensitive and GIS technique, reveals that the city lost 28.92% of its wetlands including river, canal and pond between 1980 and 2018. These changes have made the city vulnerable to water logging and drainage system failure, the study asserts. 

In Chattogram, the area coverage of green spaces decreased from 68.34% in 1990 to 36.51% in 2020. The decrease in green spaces was mainly due to the expansion of built-up areas, as about 51.32 km² area of green spaces were transformed into built-up areas during the period, finds another study titled "Green space dynamics in response to rapid urbanisation: Patterns, transformations and topographic influence in Chattogram city, Bangladesh." 

City planners believe that 'uncontrolled' growth while ignoring a master plan and incoordination among the development authorities have led to the land cover changes and consequently the water-logging in Chattogram city.   

Professor Alak Paul, a faculty of geography and environmental science department at the University of Chittagong, has observed that Chattogram city has been expanding unplanned since the beginning of 2000. 

"In my observation, the territorial expansion of Chattogram has not been monitored properly and controlled in consideration of changing weather patterns and the natural setup. These failures have actually made the situation worse," Alak said. 

Chattogram had its first Master Plan in 1995. But the plan has not been implemented in the last 25 years. Now the authorities are drafting a new master plan. Due to inconsistency and ignorance, it is deemed impossible to restore the zones designed for water flow and retention. 

Manjur Alam Manju, former Mayor of CCC, thinks that due to delays in the implementation of the master plan, the development of Chattogram City might have derailed.  

He didn't comment on the ongoing development projects, particularly those for addressing water logging, since the projects are still not completed. "As a citizen of Chattogram, I can only hope that water logging will be minimised soon. However, I would request the concerned authorities to complete the projects in due time. 

Moreover, I hope they will address their incompetence soon," Manju said, requesting the incumbent authorities to keep clean the runoff retention zones and canals on a regular basis.