English
Read the following text and answer the questions :-
The river Buriganga is an example of a dying river. A report published in the Daily Sun describes what has happened to the river Buriganga and why. Its water is polluted and a perpetual stench fills the air around it. But that is not what it was like before. The report says that the river had a glorious past. Once it was a tributary of the mighty Ganges and flowed into the Bay of Bengal through the river Dhaleshwari. Gradually it lost its link with the Ganges and got the name Buriganga. The Mughals marvelled at the tide level of the Buriganga and founded their capital Jahangirnagar on its bank in 1610. The river supplied drinking water and supported trade and commerce. Jahangirnagar was renamed Dhaka which grew into a heavily populated city with chronic shortage of space.
The city paid back the bounty of the river by sucking life out of it! According to newspaper report, the Buriganga is dying because of pollution. Huge quantities of toxic chemicals and wastes from mills and factories, hospitals and clinics and households and other establishments are dumped into the river everyday. The city of Dhaka discharges about 4500 tons of solid waste everyday and most of it is directly released into the Buriganga. According to the Department of the Environment (DOE) 20,000 of tannery waste, including some highly toxic materials, are released into the river everyday. Experts identified nine industrial areas in and around the capital city as the primary sources of river pollution: Tongi. Tejgaon, Hazaribagh, Tarabo, Narayanganj, Savar, Gazipur, Dhaka Export Processing Zone and Ghorashal.
The river would need a monster's stomach to digest all the wastes mentioned above. There is a limit upto which it can put up with its cruel and thoughtless treatment. We the humans have successfully killed one of our rivers. There are other rivers in the country that are being subjected to similar thoughtless treatment. Unless we take care of our rivers, there may come a time when we will cry 'water, water and find it nowhere.
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