Salinity of CWASA water causes woes to Port City dwellers
Chattogram Bureau :
The officials of Chattogram WASA said that due to the salinity of the river water, there is a shortage of drinking water in different areas of the Port City. They
said that water is being supplied by maintaining international standards. 600mg of saline per liter is drinkable. Drinking this water will not cause any physical problems. Complete desalination is not possible without rain.
It is reported that regular water is not available in many areas of Ward No 39, 40 and 41. Moreover, the water supply of WASA has decreased in North Kattali No 10 and Pahartali Ward No 9 of the city. In addition, the problem of salinity in water has been added.
Meanwhile, despite the increase in water salinity, Chattogram WASA does not have a solution to this problem. Although one after another water treatment plants have been set up, there is no specific solution in the hands of the organisation as to what action can be taken in such a situation.
Although reverse osmosis method is available to solve the salinity problem, this method is not applied in any water treatment plant in Chattogram WASA because it is expensive. So even if the water is purified, the water does not have the opportunity to reduce the salinity. Associate Professor of Chattogram University Applied Chemistry and Chemical Engineering Department Didarul Alam Chowdhury said, due to the rise of sea water in the river during the dry season, the salinity of the water is increasing.
As a result, there is some salinity in WASA water. WASA water treatment plants are only purifying water. But there is a different method called ‘reverse osmosis’ to reduce salinity. Through which the drinking water can be made free of salt. It costs more. Reverse osmosis costs Tk80 to 90 per litre of water. The water produced in this process does not contain unnecessary minerals, so drinking this water reduces the pressure on the kidneys to a great extent. This process does not require any kind of heat application and the water is 100 per cent pure without heat application, which is scientifically proven.