BASILA, Bangladesh Sep 11 (Asia Water Wire) - Until about five years ago, the Buriganga River near Dhaka had enough fish to support the roughly 100 families that live in this settlement, located on the outskirts of the Bangladeshi capital.

But lately, the largely minority Hindu fishermen have had has less fishing to do. It is also unlikely that they would be casting their nets again in the near future. That is because the 17-kilometre stretch of the river that used to have enough stock to support the fisherfolk throughout the year is now a lifeless sewer, carrying effluents from the Hazaribagh tanneries.

The 243 tanneries located about three kilometers north-east of this town pour 7.7 million liters of untreated, highly toxic liquid wastes into the river everyday.

“In the past we could catch fish in other small rivers around Dhaka during the floods. But this year, there has been no flood, and thus no fish,” says Lakhyan Rajbangshi, a fisherman. “We never learnt to do anything else other than fishing in our mother river, now look at the water. We cannot even wash our feet in it,” he adds, pointing to the grey-black slime flowing nearby.

Lakhyan was among a group of fishermen smoking marijuana and gambling at one of the mud huts on the riverbank. Their fishing boats and nets were anchored at the small ‘ghat’ or harbour near the settlement.

This year’s dry spell in Bangladesh – the worst in 25 years – has not only caused large tracts of farmland to dry up, but has rendered many poor fishermen like Lakhyan without the means to earn extra cash.

The annual floods also flushed the polluted rivers and re-introduced aquatic life that remained in the waters until the level of pollution rose over time.

“I curse those who took away our livelihood and pray that our mother (the Buriganga, meaning the elderly river) is brought back to life again,” said Gurunath, another fisherman, as he snorted on his marijuana pipe.

The drug may bring temporary “solace” to the fishers but it is unlikely that even God can undo what the tanneries have done to their river.

Much of the leather exported by Bangladesh (234 million U.S. dollars in 11 months of the fiscal year 2005 to 2006) is processed at the Hazaribagh tanneries, an income that neither the government nor the industry would give up easily. The tannery owners there have enough clout to continue flouting the pollution control rules.

The tanneries also employ about 75,000 people, making any move to speed up the planned relocation of the units a political hot potato.

In 2003, the government announced plans to relocate the tanneries – some of which have been around for over 40 years – to a new Leather Industrial Estate (LIE) at Savar about 20 km north of the city.

The plan was to install a common effluent-treatment plant which, along with the construction of the LIE, was expected to cost 1.7 billion taka (25 million dollars).

But government officials now say it may take several years for the relocation to begin. The tannery owners have refused to move until the government agrees to pay them 8 billion taka (114.2 million dollars), which is their estimated cost of transporting equipment and rebuilding at the new leather estate.

The owners are also demanding a waver of loan repayments, which adds up to about 12 billion taka (171 million dollars).

“Their (tanneries’) way of earning money has killed our fish, destroyed our land and contaminated our groundwater,” says a visibly angry Gurunath. “But the government is indifferent to the problems the businesses have caused on the poor.”

Across the river at Jhaochar Noori Begum, a mother of five makes two 30-minute trips to fetch water for the household everyday.

“This is how the poor have to live,” she says. “The river water is not fit for drinking and water from my tube well has a foul smell.”

As a strategy to reduce the number of daily trips to the neighbour’s tube well, she balances several pitchers on her head and hands on every trip. She often has her eldest child tag along to share the chore.

“I used to catch fish part time in the Buriganga and made a decent earning selling it at the Rayer Bazar kitchen market,” says Zohur, Noori’s husband. “Look at my skin now, I have a strange disease caused by touching the river water,” he adds.

Until 2001, discharge from the tanneries was channeled about 10 km downstream through a canal running along the flood protection dyke around the city. But unscrupulous landgrabbers, aided by local politicians, built over the sewer, and this has caused waterlogging.

Rather than evict the encroachers, corrupt Dhaka Water and Sewerage Authority (DWASA) officials devised an alternative – dump the discharge into the Buriganga about one km upstream of Basila.

“Nobody seems to understand simple environmental economics,” says Mohammad Salam Munshi, a teacher at the local school.

Cleaning the Buriganga could produce almost 10 times more returns compared to what the tanneries bring to the people, he adds. According to Munshi, before the pollutants killed the river, it used to produce enough fish to feed the roughly 13 million people living in the Bangladeshi capital.

“Today, the tannery owners are earning foreign currency at the cost of our lives, and the government is letting that happen,” he points out.

But relocating the tanneries – if and when that happens – may not be the end of the Buriganga River’s woes. More than 70 percent of the city’s untreated sewage also ends up in the river, adding to its pollution. (END/AWW/IPSAP/MAK/BB/JS/110906)