Liquid waste from several automatic rice mills in Santahar, in Bogura's Adamdighi upazila, is being dumped into canals, ponds and cropland without passing through an effluent treatment plant (ETP), local people say. Water sources are being polluted and both farmland and aquatic life are suffering.
Residents allege that foul-smelling water from the parboiling and washing sections of about 14 automatic rice mills goes straight out. Waste water from one mill runs along railway land past fields into the Iramati canal, and from another it flows through a drain across cropland into a creek. Mills are required to install ETPs, but none is visible at these, they say.
Samples of mill waste water and canal water were tested at the Santahar fisheries research laboratory. Dissolved oxygen (DO) in water should normally be 3 to 6 milligrams per litre; the mill water had 1.4 milligrams and the canal water 1.2 milligrams.
Shishir Kumar Dey, a scientific officer at the laboratory, said the tests showed the water from the mills and the Iramati canal to be highly harmful to the environment, and that ash and metallic matter were found in the samples. A heavy-metal test would show in more detail which harmful metals are present, he said.
Local farmer Latifur Rahman said the stench from the creek keeps people away, yields on his land have fallen, and fish cannot survive in the rotten water. Fish from the canal once met his family's protein needs; now even buying fish has become hard, he said.
This report is based on information from Krishi Shomoy's Bogura correspondent.
Photo: Scott E. Justice / Wikimedia Commons (public domain)
Source: Krishi Shomoy
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