The WaterBlog

Choking bridges: the death of tidal rivers

By Md. Saif Uddin, Lutfor Rahman and Frank van Steenbergen It is river but without water. Instead of water there is silt, silt from bank to bank. The Sholmari River is one of the many tidal rivers in the Bangladesh South West coastal belt. In all these rivers there is a very fine balance between water coming in with the tides from the sea with sediments and the sediments are pushed downwards with upstream flow which has been reduced ever since India diverted more water upstream with the construction of Farakka Barrage in 1975. The Sholmari river is now dead, besides less upstream flow, the other culprit is the Batiaghata bridge that restricted and choked the river. To save on costs, the bridge was made more narrow then the river width and bridge span length was kept small which increase the number of piers. Large number of piers in the river change the river hydro-morphodynamic condition which increases the sedimentation… Continued

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