The 'small' problem of setting up big drinking water projects

Salinity intrusion is rendering many parts of our coastal districts inhabitable. Loss of farmland and livelihood are, in the worst-case scenario, forcing people to leave their land and become internally displaced.

The harms of increased salinity know no bounds, but one of the most direct impacts of salinity is felt when it is ingested into human bodies, i.e. through drinking, which is manifested through various ailments.

Now, in a country where moderate to heavy rainfall occurs for six to seven months over the year, people know how to harvest rainwater and use it for everyday purposes. 

From time immemorial, people living in the coastal areas have been harvesting rainwater in earthen pots and kitchenware and using them for cooking and drinking. 

Traditional earthenware used for this purpose is usually of 100 litre capacity and other kitchenware used are even smaller, making them inadequate for storing enough drinking water for the long dry months.

To help ease the situation, different NGOs and government agencies have been providing rainwater harvesting systems with larger tanks, to facilitate rainwater harvesting in coastal areas for decades.

Non-government organisation BRAC, with the support from the Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, is now building on the practice and implementing an innovative rainwater harvesting facilitation project in Bagerhat's Mongla Upazila where they are working to install thousands of systems at household, institution and in community level for private recipients who fulfil the preconditions of the organisation.

Under the project titled 'Enhancing safe drinking water security and climate resilience through rainwater harvesting,' the organisation is installing 5,390 rainwater harvesting systems (RWHS) in the six unions in Mongla. More than half of the systems have been installed so far.

BRAC has been providing 2,000 litre tanks with the harvesting systems provided to households. For institutional (such as schools, mosques and temples) and community levels, the storage capacity ranges from 20,000 to 1,20,000 litres.

The size of the installed systems makes clear sense.

In Chandpai Mehershah Secondary School, there is a 40,000 litre system comprising four large tanks, each having 10,000 litre capacity. The school has 300 students.

If every student drinks one litre water everyday during school hours, the harvested water should last more than four months. When we visited the site in February, the tanks were half-full. There was an unusual rainfall just a week ago, and the students said the water level inside the tanks rose by a few inches.

The impacts of sizable rainwater harvesting systems are clearly felt.

Sumaya Akter Raisa, a student of class nine at the school said, "We had to fetch drinking water from far away ponds, which would be treated with alum before drinking. Now we can have fresh drinking water at our school. "

Drinking the pond water would often cause diarrhoea, she added.

Sabita Biswas (42), a mother of two from Chila Union, said she had to fetch two jars of water twice every day from a distant pond. Now that she has received a RWHS, she has more time for the chores she must do.

"I raise cattle, few ducks and tend to the vegetable garden. As I don't have to go bringing drinking water now, I can spend more time taking care of the things at home," she told The Business Standard.

Sabita still has an earthen jar used for rainwater storage. Set up side by side, the sheer size of the new tank attests to why size matters in this case.

A 2,000 litre tank, if filled with water, should provide a five-member family enough drinking water for a couple of dry months.

The 'small' problem of scaling up

There are other examples that show why scaling up traditional rainwater harvesting systems is so important.

Mongla Port Municipality has two large water reservoirs (5 feet deep ponds) spanning over 84 acres of land. With two treatment plants and two tanks with a total capacity of 9.50 lakh litre, it supplies 29 lakh litre freshwater to 2,500 households everyday, according to the municipality's website. 

The site also mentions that it needs to double its capacity to supply freshwater to 5,600 holdings of the municipality.

BRAC also tapped into existing freshwater ponds to ensure safe drinking water to communities. In Chouridanga Ahmadia Dakhil Madrassah campus, the NGO has set up a solar powered pond sand filter (PSF) with a reserve capacity of 10 thousand litres, that is expected to be refilled twice every day from the adjacent pond, which is little over one acre in size.

When fully operational, the site will supply fresh drinking water to 250 member households. In addition, small businessmen with their rickshaw-vans will ferry water to non-member customers at a price fixed by the maintenance committee, composed of locals – UP members, madrassah superintendent and others. 

The PSF, fitted with a UV filter for disinfection, was only two months old, and was slated to be fully functional just after our visit.

Another 40-thousand-litre RWHS installed at the Setu Bandhan Multipurpose Cooperative in ward-3 in Chila Union in Mongla is showing hope for its 25 member households, who are no longer forced to travel kilometres to collect drinking water.

To understand the coverage of fresh drinking water at the ward, we talked to Shipra Haldar, the president of the Setu Bandhan water management committee and a UP member.

Photo: Ashraful Haque

She said there are 600 households in ward-3. About 50 of them have got RWHS from different agencies – government and non-government. In addition, 50 families have availed themselves of harvesting systems at their own expense. 

This means 475 families of ward-3 of Chila union still do not have access to safe drinking water.

The installed RWHSs prove that the systems are a viable solution to the drinking water crisis, and such systems with a desired capacity can be installed at household level for around Tk20 thousand, according to locals.

 The 'small' problem with this  is that the locals can hardly afford to buy and install such a system. 

Of course, they are willing to pay some money for it. In fact, BRAC members receiving their harvesting systems paid Tk2,500 each. Community recipients such as Setu Bandhan paid Tk50,000 for their large-sized RWHS. 

Therefore, to ensure safe drinking water for the coastal areas, all we need is enough funding. BRAC's model appears to be an improved one, and the locals agree that the model works.

We did challenge the view that the model will sustain beyond the project's tenure.

Merely 50 metres away from the BRAC-installed PSF in the Chouridanga Madrassah campus, another PSF could be spotted. When asked, locals said that it was out of order.

Since cyclone Sidr, thousands of such PSFs were set up across the coastal districts by NGOs and government agencies. Almost all of them went out of order in absence of maintenance. 

The community members, the beneficiary of the PSFs, failed to come to agreement and act in collaboration to take care of the resources given to them.

Since the local people are accustomed to drinking pond water, they care little when the PSFs stop running clogged with pollutants, and go back to the old habit of consuming pond water.

However, the recipients of BRAC's community RWHSs say this will not happen this time.

"Earlier, we didn't have a committee to take care of the system. Now that we do, we will keep the system functional," said Md Arif Fakir, a UP member and the president of the water management committee of Chouridanga.

"The water will be sold for Tk1 per litre, so we'll always have money to maintain the system," added Sheik Jalal Uddin, the superintendent of the madrassah.

Back to the funding issue, we asked Abu Sadat Moniruzzaman Khan, programme head at BRAC Climate Change Programme, which is implementing the rainwater harvesting project, if the funding could be availed from climate funds such as GCF or the loss and damage fund that was agreed at COP28 to be established to help developing countries cope with the effects of climate change.

"The modality of the loss and damage fund has not been determined yet, but once it is operationalised, such drinking water projects will definitely qualify for the funds. But this will depend on how smartly we can push for the funds," said Moniruzzaman.

The BRAC CCP head pointed out that the local industries need a lot of workers, continuously attracting thousands of migrants from other coastal districts. As a result, the scenario is fast changing, and demand for fresh drinking water is rising day by day.

When asked if the local public officials ever attempted to persuade local industrialists to mobilise funds to mitigate drinking water crisis in the area, Shipra Haldar, the local UP member replied in the negative but agreed that such attempts must be made.

In this respect, Moniruzzaman Khan mentioned that BRAC has implemented climate projects in other parts of the country with CSR funds from two national-level corporate entities.

The 'leak' must be repaired

While climate change is responsible for increased salinity in the coastal areas of Bangladesh, two other factors are worsening the impact - reduced freshwater supply through the Ganges river system due to Farakka barrage, and shrimp farming.

The first problem, transboundary in nature, is not going to be resolved in the near future as things stand right now. But the shrimp farms also deserve serious attention.

The monsoon acts as a very effective antidote to the salinity problem. So much so that even the shrimp farmers, faced by disease attacks and reduced export caused by corrupt practices from local traders, nowadays farm freshwater fish species during the monsoon as it washes the salinity out.

But as the monsoon ends, they go back to brackish water fish farming and let the saline water intrude.

This ruins the fresh water reservoirs and farmlands alike.

Shipra Haldar, the female UP member we talked to said the locals cannot prevent the influential big shrimp farmers from the harmful practice. This continues to act as a leak in the 'freshwater bucket'.

As rainwater harvesting systems ease the crisis of drinking water, the need for freshwater for other daily usage remains unmet during the dry season. 

As people are forced to bathe in saline water, this takes a toll on their health too. At the same time, the farmers continue to suffer from the lack of freshwater for their vegetable and rice paddy.