“Water, water, everywhere, nor any drop to drink.” The agonising lament from Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s famous poem The Rime of the Ancient Mariner is not a mere literary reference in Dacope upazila. Nestled against the Sundarbans in Khulna, it is a harsh, daily reality of existence for this region.
Here, rivers map the landscape and water is everywhere, yet finding a single drop of safe, drinkable water remains a constant, exhausting struggle.
Some residents walk for hours under a punishing sun to fetch water, while others, driven by desperate thirst, drink directly from contaminated ponds or ditches and fall ill.
The roots of the crisis lie in Dacope’s unforgiving geography. Formed of three islands, the upazila is entirely surrounded by saline river waters. Deep below the surface, the groundwater is heavily contaminated with salinity and arsenic, rendering almost all deep and shallow tube wells useless.
When the dry season sets in – stretching from the beginning of Falgun to the middle of Jyaishtha – more than two lakh people across one municipality and nine unions are plunged into a severe water crisis.
This scarcity has choked local commerce and agriculture. In local bazaars, tea stalls, restaurants, and sweet shops are struggling because they cannot provide clean water to their customers.
“We cannot even serve drinking water to our customers at times,” laments Harinath, a hotelier at Chalna Bazar. Shopkeeper Kamona Biswas shares the same plight. Out in the parched fields, the crisis has hit the region’s main crops; with no fresh water to irrigate watermelon and paddy crops, the plants are dying, leaving farmers with poor yields.
Vanishing options, dropping water tables
Deep tube wells have proven unsuccessful almost everywhere in the upazila, and the majority of shallow tube wells are broken. The few that still function yield water heavily contaminated with salt, arsenic, and excessive iron.
Previously, residents relied on Pond Sand Filters (PSFs), but a scarcity of ponds has left almost all of these filters dysfunctional. As a result, middle- and lower-income families are forced to drink untreated pond water directly.
During the dry season, the family of Shahinur Sana from the Jaynagar area must walk four to five kilometres in the blistering heat just to secure a basic supply of water.
The ground itself is drying up. According to Sumon Kumar Roy, Sub-Assistant Engineer of the Department of Public Health Engineering (DPHE) in Khulna, water levels across Koyra, Paikgacha, Batiaghata, and Dacope have dropped by 20 feet.
Deep tube wells have failed completely in Amadi, Bagali, and Maharajpur unions. In North and South Bedkashi unions, only 20 per cent of deep tube wells were successfully installed, and even those yield almost no water.
In seven of Dacope’s unions – Tildanga, Pankhali, Sutarkhali, Kamarkhola, Laudob, Kailashganj, and Banisanta – scarcity persists for nearly eight months of the year. In neighbouring Batiaghata, the water table has plummeted by 25 feet, accompanied by high levels of salinity.
Paikgacha Upazila Nirbahi Officer (UNO) Wasiuzzaman Chowdhury reports that 1.5 lakh people in his upazila suffer from water shortages during the dry season, with those along the banks of the Shibsa River suffering for years, and the residents of Deluti and Shamukpota facing a year-round crisis.
The rusting Tk7 crore saviour
Perhaps nothing highlights the tragedy of Dacope more than the idle Surface Water Treatment Plant in Chalna Municipality.
Built at a cost of Tk 7 crore during the 2019-20 financial year under the DPHE’s “Water Supply and Environmental Sanitation including Human Waste Management in 32 Municipalities Project,” the plant was designed to resolve the municipal water crisis.
A 12-kilometre pipeline was laid to carry water from the Bhadra River, and 351 consumer connections were established.
Yet, three years after completion, the plant lies dormant while municipal residents despair. Handed over to the municipality in May 2023, its expensive machinery is now slowly rusting away from disuse, and electrical components are breaking down.
Cables and parts are routinely stolen, and even police cases have failed to stop the plunder. “We are in extreme misery,” laments Sanjit Kumar, a customer in the Chalna Bazar area.
The bottleneck is primarily environmental and legal. Upazila Sub-Assistant Public Health Engineer Abdullah Al Mahmud explains that because the Bhadra Canal dries up in the dry season, the water supply is disrupted. The DPHE asked the municipality to allocate a lake or three acres of land to build a reservoir next to the plant, but the municipal authority failed to provide it, preventing the project from delivering its benefits.
Chalna’s Municipal Mayor, Sanot Kumar Biswas, remains optimistic, stating that household pipeline installations are progressing and testing is underway to resolve the municipal water crisis.
Dacope UNO Borhan Uddin Mithu adds that legal complications regarding the lake – which belongs to the Water Development Board – have caused delays, but plans are in place to resolve the legal issues and re-excavate the water body.
Rainwater harvesting: A canopy of hope
Amidst the dry canals and parched earth, hope comes from the skies. Rainwater harvesting has emerged as a crucial lifeline. Across the upazila, some 7,500 tanks have been distributed by government and non-government bodies, bringing solace to thousands of families.
Over the last five years, the DPHE has installed 5,826 rainwater harvesting systems and distributed 2,000 more, while various development organisations have supplied another 10,000 systems on their own initiative.
The desperate need for fresh surface water traces back to 2009, when Cyclone Aila shattered embankments, inundating vast stretches of land with saline water for an extended period and permanently poisoning the local freshwater sources.
For residents like the ailing Khadija Begum of Parjaynagar village under Chalna Union, a 2,000-litre tank donated by an NGO has transformed daily life. Before receiving it, she had to drag her sick body three kilometres every day to fetch water.
The NGO also trained her family on proper tank maintenance so they could stretch their supply safely throughout the year.
Currently, Dacope has 2,668 active rainwater harvesting tanks, 27 deep tube wells, and 500 shallow tube wells. Abdullah Al Mahmud estimates that the total number of government and NGO-provided tanks in the upazila is between 10,000 and 11,000, with some residents purchasing their own.
With approximately 43,000 families living in the upazila according to the 2022 Census, Pankhali Union Parishad Chairman Sheikh Sabbir Ahmed maintains a clear vision: “Every family needs a tank.”
Abdullah Al Mahmud adds that if families regularly clean their tanks, keep the stored water covered, and use it timely, safe drinking water can indeed be secured year-round.
