The Struggle for Safe Drinking Water in Coastal Bangladesh
Dr Sonia Ferdous Hoque is an Environmental Social Scientist, working as a Senior Research Associate in Water Security and Society at the University of Oxford
When you think of coastal Bangladesh, picture a vast, flat landscape where the land meets the sea in a delicate balance shaped by both human intervention and nature’s forces. This region, located in the Ganges-Brahmaputra-Meghna delta, is a patchwork of tidal rivers and creeks, interlacing small, embanked islands. While rivers, ponds, and rainfall are ever-present, clean, drinkable water is in short supply. This struggle is vividly captured in the photo above, which shows a hand-pumped tube well, a piped water system, and a water vendor loading containers of water onto a van – each representing a different aspect of the region’s water supply challenges.
Tube wells – like the one in the photo – were once hailed as a revolutionary solution for rural drinking water in Bangladesh. In the 1980s and 1990s, the government of Bangladesh, with help from international donors, launched massive campaigns to install tube wells across the country. This was part of a larger effort to combat waterborne diseases, particularly diarrheal diseases caused by contaminated surface water, which claimed the lives of many children. With groundwater easily accessible at shallow depths in most of the delta, tube wells offered a low-cost solution. Households quickly began installing their own wells, and within a few decades, Bangladesh became home to 18 million tube wells, 16 million of which are privately installed by rural families.
The tube well revolution that transformed water access across much of the country has been less successful in the coastal areas, where saline water makes tube wells an unreliable solution. The complex hydrogeology of the coastal region means that salt levels can vary drastically even within short distances. Deeper groundwater reserves are generally less saline, but drilling deep wells is expensive and comes with no guarantee of finding usable water.
Standing next to the tube well in the photo is a small pumphouse that operates a solar-powered piped water system, distributing water to nearby households through public taps. The borehole drawing groundwater was intentionally sited next to the tube well as this is the only place in the village known to have low salinity water. Financed by an international donor organisation and implemented by a local NGO, this piped scheme is one of the many alternative technologies present in the coastal region – others being pond sand filters, small desalination plants, and rainwater harvesting. Since the system runs on solar energy, there are no ongoing operational costs, meaning users do not have to pay regular fees for water.
However, just after four years of installation, the system suffered a mechanical fault and stopped working. While the cost to repair it was relatively low, no one in the community took responsibility. The system lay broken for years until another organisation stepped in and repaired it. This story is far from unique. Across the global south, billions of dollars are spent on building water infrastructure that eventually falls into disrepair due to a lack of ownership and management. The community-based management model, once seen as the ideal way to ensure local participation and sustainability, has often struggled to maintain more complex water systems like piped schemes.
The final element in the photo is the water vendor loading containers onto a van. This vendor represents an informal but critical part of the region’s water supply system. In areas where the piped water system doesn’t reach and tube wells are unreliable due to salinity, households often have no choice but to purchase water from vendors. The costs are high, not because the vendors have a large profit margin but because of the manual labour required to transport these heavy containers. At around 40 US cents per 30-litre container, this water is many times more expensive than the rates people pay for water in developed cities, where households enjoy 24/7 access to piped water at a fraction of the cost.
Water vending has become increasingly common in coastal Bangladesh, particularly during the dry season when salinity in the groundwater reaches its peak. From March to May, the lack of upstream water flows from the Himalayas allows saltwater from the Bay of Bengal to push further inland, contaminating both the rivers and shallow aquifers. For many, the daily struggle to find clean drinking water becomes even more acute during this time. In recent years, many local residents have invested in small-scale reverse osmosis base desalination plants, earning a living from selling water during this period of crisis. This is again a testimony of the strong entrepreneurial culture in Bangladesh, which spurred the growth of tube wells in the first place.
The water crisis in coastal Bangladesh is not due to a lack of investment. For both public and private actors, who have poured millions of dollars into this sector, the focus has been on building new systems rather than maintaining or improving existing ones. Many communities are left with water points that function only intermittently or have fallen into disrepair. As private households have increasingly taken on the responsibility of securing their own water supply, the financial burden has shifted to individuals, creating a divide between those who can afford better systems and those who cannot.
One of the major challenges is the lack of regulation and oversight in the water sector. Outside of the capital city, no one needs permission to drill a borehole or set up a water treatment plant. While the government tracks its own water infrastructure, there is no comprehensive record of the donor-funded or privately installed water points. As a result, there’s a significant data gap on the actual progress and deficiencies in water access. The drilling of boreholes, without sufficient data on water quality or hydrogeological conditions, further compounds the problem. This trial-and-error approach leaves many communities in high-salinity areas without proper access to clean water, as public funds are often directed to places where groundwater is already known to be good. Meanwhile, private and donor-funded projects attempt to fill the gaps, but without an overarching strategy or framework, these efforts are often piecemeal and unsustainable.
The uncertainty around water quality is another pressing issue. While some water points are tested for contaminants after installation, there is little to no provision for regular water quality monitoring. Although groundwater is generally free from biological contaminants, human activities – such as improper waste disposal, agricultural runoff, and poor sanitation – can introduce pollutants into the water. Contaminants like salt and iron are easy to detect because they alter the taste of the water, but others, such as arsenic and manganese, are more dangerous because they are tasteless and odourless. These invisible threats can have severe long-term health impacts on the affected communities.
The success of the tube well system – once a transformative solution for rural water access – has become deeply embedded in both the government’s institutional framework and the local culture. Tube wells are viewed as the standard solution, and alternative technologies are often seen as temporary fixes for areas where tube wells don’t work due to high salinity or other environmental challenges. This has led to a resistance to moving toward higher levels of water service, such as piped water schemes. Many rural households prefer to stick with tube wells, as they offer a free, on-premises water source, and some have even upgraded their handpumps to submersible pumps, mimicking a piped water system within their own homes.
The solution to this issue is straightforward – install piped water schemes that can transport water from areas with good water availability to those lacking it. Where necessary, these systems can include treatment technologies to remove contaminants like arsenic or salt. However, maintaining such systems requires more than just technical solutions. It requires regular financial contributions from all users, with tariffs set high enough to cover operational costs and any unexpected repairs. Instead of relying on voluntary user committees, often influenced by local politics, there should be professional service providers responsible for collecting tariffs, monitoring water quality, and performing ongoing maintenance. This approach isn’t revolutionary – it’s already being implemented in cities with piped water networks managed by utilities, which are often heavily subsidized by the government.
The photo captures the complexity of water access in coastal Bangladesh: a tube well that once symbolised progress, a piped water system that broke down due to poor management, and a water vendor providing a stopgap solution at a high price. Each represents a piece of the puzzle in a region where water is everywhere, yet safe drinking water is scarce.
In a land surrounded by water, the scarcity of clean drinking water is indeed an irony. The challenge now is to move beyond piecemeal solutions and develop a coordinated approach to water management that addresses the root causes of the crisis: an outdated institutional structure with uncoordinated infrastructure installation by multiple actors, ultimately relying on users for operation and maintenance, without systematic data and regulation for abstracting, selling or monitoring quality monitoring.
The opinions expressed are those of the contributor, not of the RSAA.
