Technology to connect Urir Char with Noakhali

It is welcome news that with the help of technology it would be possible to acquire land from the Bay of Bengal and connect Urir Char Island with Noakhali mainland. The technology involves construction of a Cross Dam by filling up the water with sediments and acquire land. A cross dam traps sediments between two islands to form a mud-packed natural barrier and thus a new land is formed.

The proposed plan of the Bangladesh Ministry of Water Resources shows that by filling up the water channel in the Bay a two kilometer long Cross Dam will be built to bridge Urir Char with Noakhali. The technology will also help to acquire about 10,000 hectare of land from the bottom of the sea.  The proposal termed ‘Construction of Cross Dam from Urir Char-Noakhali aiming to restore land’ is at the final stage for placing at the Planning Commission for approval.

Once completed, the permanent project will contribute immensely to the socio-economic uplift of the people of the locality through expanding agriculture, communication network, basic infrastructure and food security. The project cost has been estimated at Tk. 636 crore and is likely to be completed by the year 2025. Reportedly, proposal from the ministry concerned for the construction of four such cross dams to connect Urir Char-Noakhali, Sandwip-Urir Char, Noakhali-Jahajchar and Jahajchar-Sandwip are going to be placed before the ECNEC one after another.

Acquiring land from the sea is also known as land reclamation. As said before, many developed countries in the world have reclaimed land from the water to construct various projects. Scientific journals inform us in detail about some of the major projects completed in the ‘70s and ‘80s. The best recent example is the man-made archipelagos in Dubai, which was built by dredging sand from the Persian and Arabian Gulf’s floors. The sand was then sprayed into shape using GPS technology for precision. Millions of tons of rock were used for the protection of the man-made island. This is an iconic project with hotels and apartment houses built for the superrich people of the world.

Experts tell us that the method of land reclamation involves filling the project area with large amounts of heavy rock or cement blocks, then filling with clay and soil until the land rises from the water and attains the desired height.

It may be mentioned that the first major land reclamations were carried out in the 1970s, when the Port of Rotterdam in the Netherlands, was extended further in length and breadth. The technology rapidly spread around the world and impressed many other world leaders. In 1975, the government of Singapore took up the construction of a new airport on the eastern tip of Singapore, right on the sea. The Changi airport once built had used over 40 million cubic meters of sand reclaimed from the seabed. Hong Kong, the Netherlands and China used the technology to reclaim land from the sea. Whole islands have also been created through applying cross dam and land reclamation technology. The 970 square kilometer long Flevopolder Island in the Netherlands is known to be the largest reclaimed artificial island in the world. Kansai International Airport in Osaka, Japan and Hong Kong International Airport are also examples of how human ingenuity can help change their fate.

Interestingly, according to experts, Hatiya, Urir Char, Sandwip and some other smaller islands in the south have been formed naturally over the millennia from the sediments that came down with water from the Himalayas. It is said by experts that about 2 billion tonnes of sediments come from the upper regions every year and get deposited in the Bay of Bengal. The sediments gradually solidify and form into hard soil.

The Netherlands government had submitted a proposal in the 1950s to connect all the small islands through Cross Dams to create a huge land area. But the proposal was not entertained by the then government.

We hope the proposed Urir Char-Noakhali Cross Dam will be built in time so that the other three proposals can also be completed soon.