ADB approves loan to improve Dhaka water supplies

The Asian Development Bank (ADB) has approved a $250m loan to expand the coverage and quality of water supplies to nearly 11 million people in Dhaka, Bangladesh.

Dhaka has been drawing heavily on groundwater but the current rate of extraction is no longer sustainable with the water table falling by 2m to 3m a year.

ADB principal urban development specialist South Asia department Norio Saito said that the city is struggling to meet the water needs of its booming population, and more worryingly, its groundwater is rapidly depleting.

"This assistance will allow Dhaka’s water authority to improve facilities and tap a new water source to take pressure off existing supplies," Saito added.

The Dhaka Environmentally Sustainable Water Supply Project will develop a new raw water intake at the Meghna River, about 30km east of the city.

The project will include a pumping station with the capacity to provide two billion litres of water a day.

The funds will also support construction of a water treatment plant at Gandharpur with a capacity of 500 million litres per day, a treated water transmission pipeline to the existing water supply network, and distribution reinforcements.

The initiatives are expected to reduce groundwater extraction by 150 million litres a day and help the city water authority raise its overall surface water supplies to 1.9 billion litres a day by 2021.

The total cost of the project is expected to be $675m, with the government of Bangladesh providing almost $225m and the rest of the funding coming in the form of a $100m loan from Agence Française de Développement and a $100m loan from the European Investment Bank. The project is expected to be completed by December 2019.

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Image: An ADB $250m loan to expand the coverage and quality of water supplies to nearly 11 million people in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Photo: courtesy of Asian Development Bank.