Belai Beel, a wetland of about 50 square kilometres on Dhaka's doorstep, touches some 35 villages in Gazipur's Sadar, Kaliganj, Kapasia and Sreepur upazilas. The area was once called a 'store of native fish', and the beel alone supplied about a third of the district's fish demand. Hundreds of people lived by catching koi, mola, prawns and other native fish and gathering water lilies in the monsoon; in the dry season the beel becomes boro rice land.

Citing the river campaign group Nodi Banchao Andolon, NewsG24 reports that the beel drives Gazipur's farm production as well as its fisheries. But with rapid industrialisation, chemicals and toxic waste from heavy factories are flowing into the Chilai river and the beel, directly affecting fish breeding and rice growing. According to the Department of Fisheries, both the variety and the quantity of fish have fallen below half.

Grabbing and sand-filling add to the damage. Although the High Court ordered land-filling stopped after legal action by the local administration and environmentalists, weak enforcement means the beel keeps shrinking, the report says. Questions are also being raised about the health risk of the 'fresh beel fish' served at local restaurants, given the polluted water and unhygienic processing.

In the monsoon, entering the beel along the Bhadartti canal recalls Sylhet's Ratargul swamp forest or its haors, and thousands of visitors come for boat trips every rainy season. The upazila administration has made a promotional documentary and taken some steps against land grabbers, but the infrastructure for a proper tourist site is still missing.

The report sets out three steps to save the beel: forcing factories that dump waste into it to run effluent treatment plants (ETPs), with strict penalties under environmental law; stopping sand-filling completely as the High Court ordered, restoring the original boundaries and dredging where needed; and building eco-friendly tourism facilities while keeping biodiversity intact and watching for plastic pollution.

The report is by NewsG24's Gazipur correspondent.

Photo: Foeyz / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Source: NewsG24