Unregulated wastes are contaminating crops in Savar and Dhamrai
A recent Prothom Alo report on farmlands in Savar and Dhamrai upazillas offers a stark picture of how unplanned industrial expansion is erasing agricultural land and the livelihoods built on it. Farmers who once harvested enough paddy to sustain their families now stand in fields submerged in foul-smelling industrial wastewater. Fertile land has turned into black, stagnant marshes where paddy cannot take root, and where even standing barefoot brings skin infections. Test results, jointly analysed by Prothom Alo and Jahangirnagar University laboratories, reveal excessive phosphate, nitrate, ammonia and dangerous levels of heavy metals in water and soil. This contamination is near-lethal for aquatic life and deeply harmful for crops.
Industrial pollution has spread across Dautia and Jaipura mouzas of Dhamrai and areas of Koltashuti mouza in Savar. Drainage canals have been filled or encroached upon, factory effluents are channelled into low-lying plots, and persistent waterlogging has rendered hundreds of acres uncultivable. Farmland in Dhamrai has shrunk by more than a thousand hectares in less than a decade, while Savar has lost more than double that. During the same period, the number of factories in these two upazilas increased from 1,094 to 1,832. Heavy metals from tanneries, dyeing units, pharmaceutical factories and ceramic industries—chromium, cadmium, nickel and lead—have seeped into soil, rivers and crops. Studies on the Turag and Bangshi rivers confirm concentrations beyond World Health Organization (WHO) limits. The results are visible in declining yields, empty rice grains, altered crop quality and a growing fear among farmers that their land is being poisoned into permanent uselessness.
Factory owners have long been allowed to flout environmental regulations, often without installing effluent treatment plants. Local administrations act only after complaints, rarely through preventive monitoring. Farmers say that when canals are filled illegally or wastewater is diverted into fields, those responsible face no meaningful consequences. Smallholders are now being forced to sell ancestral land at throwaway prices to the very industries causing the damage.
The crisis demands decisive political will. Factories discharging untreated waste must face immediate punitive action, including shutdowns for non-compliance and the cancellation of licences. Drainage canals must be restored and protected from future encroachment. Coordinated monitoring of water and soil—across both dry and monsoon seasons—should be mandatory, along with public reporting to ensure transparency. Finally, the government must enforce land-use laws and expedite agricultural land protection legislation. Unless action is taken now, more farmers will be pushed out of agriculture, and the country risks losing vital food-producing land to reckless industrialisation.
