More than 4,000 people live in the Sutarkhali village located by the banks of river Shibsa in the Sundarbans.
Although there is an abundance of water in the village thanks to the river, it is extremely saline in all seasons except for monsoon.
Traditionally, the people in Bangladesh’s southwest region preserve rainwater for drinking purposes.
But the stock of harvested rainwater never lasts all through the year – leading to a crisis for fresh water at times.
As cyclone Remal made its landfall on the southwest coast of Bangladesh on 26 May this year, housewife Alaka Chakrabarty from Sutarkhali village was hit with a crisis for drinkable water.
“There was not a drop of water to drink in my house, the pitchers were all empty” Alaka said.
Her homestead’s rainwater tank was damaged by gusts while the swelling river Shibsa flooded the nearby pond with saline tides during the cyclone.
“The elders were thirsty but they endured. But my toddler boy was crying for water. It was an unbearable situation,” Alaka added.
While people like Alaka and her other family members were suffering from the water crisis, Akhter Hossain Gazi, operator of a reverse osmosis (RO) water treatment plant located nearly 1km away from Alaka’s house, was distributing desalinated water among the disaster-affected villagers at free of cost.
Hearing about this on 27 May, Alaka and her husband Krishnapada Chakrabarty rushed to the RO plant and collected some drinking water.
“The water source saved us,” Alaka told the Bangladesh First.
Photo: Noor-A-Alam/BFirst
According to Akhter Hossain Gazi, the particular RO plant produces 2,000 litres of desalinated water every day and people can collect the water at Tk0.50 per litre.
“Before the cyclone hit the coast, hundreds of villagers had collected drinking water from here as a preparation for the troubling times. But many of them lost their water pots in tidal surges. Fortunately, the plant still had stocks of water. So, fresh water was distributed among the affected people free of cost,” Akhter said.
On 23 January last year, a non-profit organisation Heed Bangladesh installed the RO plant with a full grant from a collaboration of the European Union, Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office of the UK Government; and the Palli Karma-Sahayak Foundation (PKSF).
During a recent visit to Sutarkhali, several villagers, mostly women, were seen collecting water from the RO plant.
They told Bangladesh First the water plant is a friend-in-need at localities that are highly vulnerable to natural disasters like tidal surges and drought.
“We witnessed the last rainfalls on 26 and 27 May. During that challenging time, we could harvest a little rainwater that finished in the next couple of days. In these humid days, the water demand has increased. Hence, the water from this RO plant is our only resort,” said 55-year-old Rahima Begum.
Rahima lives just beside the Sutarkhali embankment. A few years ago, a hand pump on an NGO loan was installed in her courtyard.
Yet to her dismay, the hand pump pulls up only saline water.
In the dry season, sea-level rises and the reduced freshwater flow from the upstream turns the coastal tributaries and distributaries extremely saline.
To address the scarcity of usable water, coastal families collect rainwater during the monsoon season. However, their water storage capacity remains quite limited, forcing them to rely on adjacent ponds for their household needs.
Photo: Noor-A-Alam/BFirst
Especially for the cattle, the villagers had no other water-sourcing option than the ponds. However, the waters in the ponds become saline during the dry season.
When the RO plant was installed close to Rahima’s house, she felt relieved.
"The water [from the RO plant] tastes sweet and much better in quality than the available saline water. At least for the dry season, I do not need to depend on the pond water to quench the thirst of my cattle," she said.
Heed Bangladesh's Khulna Region Manager Ratan Kumar Adhikari said the RO plant has been installed in such a place where climate-vulnerable people live in very impoverished conditions.
This intervention helps minimise water scarcity as well as recover the community from the shocks of natural disaster, he said.
“The salinity problem affects their health and livelihoods. Before the plant was installed, their children fell sick regularly while their cattle died because of water scarcity. Now, the situation is changing,” Ratan added.
Appraising the desalination plant, Sutarkhali Union Parishad member Nimai Kumar Roy said the village requires more RO plants.
