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| Thursday, 25 March 2004 |
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Water and its management by Dr. T. Somesekaram, General President, SLAAS I am not an irrigation or water works engineer but write as a layman, from direct personal experience of using water and noting with amazement and disbelief the degree of mismanagement of this vital resource in Sri Lanka.
Jaffna: From by birth in 1934 till entering the University of Ceylon in 1953, I lived in Jaffna. We had rain only for about three to four months per year, during the North-East monsoon but water was never a problem. For domestic use there were wells, with water about 5 metres below ground level and they never ran dry. If we planted permanent crops such as coconut or mangoes, we had to water them for two years till the roots went down and reached the water table. Even the shade trees along the roads were so planted and watered. We had a couple of acres of paddy fields and were able to grow paddy for our needs or even to sell during better harvests. But we achieved this by careful timing; observing very carefully when the rains would start and sowing the paddy soon afterwards. If the rain got delayed, we did what was known as 'sand sowing' i.e. sow the paddy seeds and plough them in with the soil dry. With the first rains they would sprout and grow. But things did not remain hunky dory as the years passed. With the advent of water pumps and agro-chemicals, water began to be used freely and perhaps wastefully for agriculture and agro-chemicals were liberally used to ensure better yields. Foresight was not shown about what would happen when the agro-chemicals seeped down into the water table. So the war and the ban on petrol, diesel and urea has been a blessing in disguise from an environment point of view. On the other hand we have never ventured near our paddy fields after 1995, for fear of getting our legs blown off by landmines. The paddy fields have been lying fallow for 9 years and perhaps they have also gained in fertility. Polonnaruwa: What a contrast it was when I was posted to Polonnaruwa as the Supdt. of Surveys in charge of survey work in the district from 1967 to 1968. During this period Col. Ivan Samarawickrema was succeeded by K. H. J. Wijayadasa as the Government Agent, and R. S. Jayaratne later Secretary Ministry of Public Administration served as a DLO. K. M. Kulatunga later UN expert in Air Surveys in the Philippines was my able assistant. Dudley Senanayake, Prime Minister accompanied by Minister M. D. Banda came on tour as part of their campaign promoting the Green Revolution. Both were experts in agriculture and it was a learning experience to listen to them answering questions during the Cultivation Committee meeting. The Prime Minister and Minister actually walked for a few hours along the paddy ridges, and I do not remember any policeman being with them. In the evening there was a public meeting and a massive crowd. Dudley Senanayake, though it was the end of a long and tiring day, was stimulated by the crowd and made an eloquent speech, ending poetically with the words, "Wewai, Dagobai, Wewai, Dagobai, Wewaii, Dagobai" swinging his majestic figure from side to side. Those who were there can never forget it. These happy memories aside, I was simply shocked by the wanton waste of water by the farmers. The North-East monsoon would start and it would rain heavily with no signs of anyone sowing paddy. A couple of months after the start of the monsoon, when the tanks were full, they would sow and lead in water from the irrigation reservoirs. Naturally, if the rains failed or were less than normal, there would be less water for the Yala crop and only part of the paddy fields would be cultivated. Why they could not time the start of the cultivation to the beginning of the monsoon was something I never understood. Libya: I had a chance of observing how the use of water was managed in Libya. It is a country half the size of India but a small population of 4 million when I served there for 30 months from late 1980. Along the Mediterranean coast, there was red soil, by weathering of limestone, very similar to the red soil in Jaffna. The difference was that the water table was much deeper down and the rain was much less. It did rain for a few weeks each year in the Benghazi area where we were supervising the construction of highways. There were very simple but effective solutions to the shortage of water. Very thin pipes were used, so that there was no waste of water. The toilet bowls were much smaller and they used the hand bidet that has now become popular in Sri Lanka. Wheat was sown during the rainy season and I have seen queues of tractors loaded with bags of wheat more than one kilometre long, waiting to hand over their produce to the huge silos that would store them. Practically, every entrance to a villa (the term they used for a house) had grapevines growing over the entrance. Fruit was plentiful and very tasty. Libya was an extremely poor land occupied by Beduins and ruled by a King till Col. Gaddaffi seized power in 1969 and has ruled ever since. After high quality petroleum deposits were discovered, Libya has embarked on many development projects. Whatever be Col. Gaddaffi's other faults, he has remained a Colonel without promoting himself and giving fancy titles and draws the same pay, 400 dinars per month which he drew as a Colonel when he seized power. And in that inhospitable semi-desert land, his Government has set the long-term target of becoming self-sufficient in food in 50 years, which was their assessment of when the petroleum would run out. Trees that needed very little water were being planted all over the place and tended till they took firm root. Greater Colombo: Now in the Greater Colombo area, the water service was suddenly cut off for two days in March 2004, due to the prevailing drought, the water level in the Kelani Ganga had gone down and sea water had gone upstream beyond the intake. This Believe It or Not situation must be put into proper perspective. Sri Lanka as a whole enjoys double the world average of rainfall. Geographically, the rainfall can be categorised into three regions, the Wet Zone, the Intermediate Zone and the Dry Zone. Colombo is very much in the Wet Zone receiving more than 5,000 mm of rain per year. There is plenty of water underground. And the humidity is high, varying from 70 per cent to 90 per cent i.e. there is water in the air. But what do we do? We collect rain water in the reservoirs of Ambatale and Kalatuwawa, supplement it with water from the Kelani Ganga, purify and chlorinate it and lead by pipes into our homes and offices. This purified water that has come a long way is used for essential purposes such as drinking, cooking etc. but also in the toilets and for gardening and washing cars. If you have a fish tank, the water must be taken into a separate vessel and kept overnight for the chlorine to become less concentrated and then poured into the fish tank. If you lead pipe water direct into the tank, the fish might die. The toilet bowls are large and contain 15 litres of water. Every time the toilet is used, 15 litres of purified, chlorinated water down the drain. Having lived in Libya and seen how they used water, I bought a smaller bowl with 10 litre capacity, from a well-known hardware shop and had it installed in my home. The bowl is not only smaller but it has two buttons, one marked 'half' and the other marked 'full'. If you push the half button, only half the water or 5 litres goes down the drain. I invite readers to do their arithmetic and see how much purified, chlorinated water can be saved if this one change, of installing this smaller type of toilet bowl in every home and office in Greater Colombo. Assuming a total population of 1.5 million in the three adjacent municipalities of Colombo, Dehiwala-Mt. Lavinia and Sri Jayewardenepura Kotte, and that a human being will use the toilet 6 times for No. 1 and once for No. 2, if the half bowl is used for No. 1, the saving per day would be 45 million litres or 45,000 cubic metres. Now if we go one step further, which my neighbour has done, and sink a tube well and have two tanks, one for the pipe-borne water and one for the water from the tube well, and the water from the tube well is used for the toilets, gardening and washing cars etc. the saving on the pipe borne water becomes much greater. For the toilets alone, the saving would be 157,500 cubic metres per day. The actual figures are not very relevant, what matters is that purified, chlorinated water led from a long way is not wasted on low level use. There is another source of water, in the air. It can be tapped using 'Membrane Technology'. An entrepreneur in Singapore, Olivia Lum has done so successfully and become a multi-millionaire at the age of 42. The following is from the Internet: Singapore: A woman entrepreneur from Singapore is harvesting cool, clear water from unconventional sources in a trend-setting business that could help quench Asia's growing thirst for renewable aquatic resources. Olivia Lum, founder and chief executive of water treatment firm Hyflux Ltd., is churning out big bucks by offering technology that can purify water from rivers and seas on a commercial scale. Hyflux also makes an appliance that can extract moisture from the air and turn it into drinking water in a home or workplace. The air-to-water machine, costing just over 1,000 US dollars, will compete with bottled water as a low-cost alternative. A membrane system and an ultra-violent lamp inside the machine purifies the water, which is dispensed either hot or cold. Using advanced membrane technology to screen out water impurities, the company has grown from humble beginnings in 1989, with only a seed capital of 20,000 Singapore dollars (12,000 US dollars), into a publicly listed firm now worth 487 million dollars. Hyflux has begun construction of a 200 million dollar seawater purification plant here in Singapore's first attempt to tap the ocean surrounding the island to reduce its dependence on imported water from Malaysia. Lum's story is a powerful, rags-to-riches tale of how an impoverished village woman from neighbouring Malaysia made it big in the Singapore and the Asian corporate world through a never-say-die attitude. So, let me end this article for World Water Day by summarising what I have written: Use less tap water by using smaller toilet bowls with half capacity as well, dig tube wells and begin tapping water from the air. The humidity in Hambantota is much less but why not try the membrane technology there, where it is needed most. The views and possible mistakes in this popular article are mine and do not necessarily represent the views of SLAAS. |
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