Encroaching hillside potato plots triggering environmental hazards

by Florence Wickramage

A train journey to Nuwara Eliya has always been an exhilarating experience. It is a delight for the nostalgic, the nature lover, and those suffering from a surfeit of the tropics.

As the train winds its way through and above, past hills and valleys the view is a delightful feast to the eyes. Velvety tea-gardens covering hill-sides with uniformly green crewcut tea bushes, brightened by women in red, blue and yellow plastic capes nimbly plucking the young leaves. The heady aroma of tea drying in factories come wafting in the gentle breeze.

The central highlands - especially Nuwara Eliya - is the heart of the country with several sensitive eco-systems which enrich the country's natural resources. Foremost being an upper watershed area and land above 1500 metres being environmentally sensitive.

Tea

Tea was first grown in Ceylon in 1824 at the Botanical Gardens at Peradeniya with a few plants brought from China. More plants were introduced from Assam in 1839. In 1867 a Scottish planter James Taylor planted tea seedlings on eight acres of forest land which had already been cleared for coffee planting.

Taylor's foresight was remarkable because two years later a blight wiped out the country's coffee crop. The island's planters turned to tea and had 400 hectares flourishing by 1875. In 1965, Ceylon displaced India as the world's biggest tea exporter making tea one of the biggest foreign exchange earners for the country.

The best Ceylon teas are known as High Grown, from plantations at heights above 1200m where the climate has a crucial effect on quality. Teas from Nuwara-Eliya, Dimbulla and Dickoya show their best quality in January and February after the North-East monsoons, when dry weather and cold nights predominate.

The tea bush is actually an evergreen tree called Chinese Camellia (camellia sinensis) which could grow 10 ft. high if not pruned every two to three years. The pruning encourages the repeated growth of a `flush' of fresh young shoots throughout the year.

These shoots - two leaves and a tender bud are picked every six to ten days. High grown tea from the central highlands entered the export market as Ceylon Tea which became world famous.

These tea gardens are now being threatened with extensive potato cultivations and the beautiful green landscape is being transformed into brown with tea bushes being uprooted and the ground tilled for potato cultivation. This transformation process and environmental problems impact adversely and severely on watersheds and catchment areas and landslides are predicted on disturbed hill-slopes. In addition social and economic problems are also foreseen.

Tea threatened

Tea lands are being rapidly cleared and reports say that hundreds of hectares are being transformed into potato plantations overnight. This transformation began as far back as 1990 and is gaining ground steadily.

Tea estates belonging to well-known tea companies are leasing out blocks of land to outside businessmen and one hectare of land thus leased out fetches a price of Rs. 7500.00 to Rs. 22,500.00.

Well managed tea plantations protect the soil whereas soil erosions occur manifold as much as 150 tons per hectare through vegetable cultivation.

Environmental damage

Tea lands being converted to potato cultivation spells disaster with adverse impacts on the soil, water and air and all connected eco-systems. The central highlands are the watershed areas for several main rivers and streams. Following rains, water from micro-catchment areas flow into major catchment areas and potato cultivations occur at places where these tributaries originate.

The entire hydrology of water sources thus gets disrupted causing immense damage to the highlands. Moreover with the ground being exposed by clearing, water evaporation is at a high level depriving a sufficient amount of water seeping into the underground natural water cycle.

Communities living adjacent to river banks too get affected with lack of drinking water. An example being farmers at Walapane do not get sufficient water due to this situation prevailing at Ragala.

This vicious cycle also extends to grasslands on the banks of plateaux and villus. Backhoe machinery are being used to uproot tea bushes and to till the land for potato cultivation causing soil erosion. Presently around 2 ft. of soil has been deposited on roadways located below potato plantations.

Soil erosion

Continuous soil erosion damages the environment irreparably. Following each shower of rain 4 to 5 inches of soil from potato planting lands get washed off and deposits on the watersheds of Uma Oya and Kotmala Oya. A few of the minor tanks like the Meraya Tank has been filled up with silt and the same fate will befall the Kotmale Reservoir if this trend continues for another 5 years.

Experts predict that large deposits of silt will fill the Randenigala and Rantambe reservoirs too as potato cultivations cause acceleration of soil erosion due to the ground being loosened. Cracks have already appeared in the Tangakele Estate.

Experts warn of massive landslides in the central highlands in several other places too where such situations prevail.

At national level this situation will adversely impact on power generation, reduction of farmer cultivation lands in the dry zone, reduction of fresh water fish farms, pollution of drinking water and the threat of Castlereigh Reservoir overflowing.

Economically the national tea industry has been threatened since the lease of tea lands seem lucrative against the profit derived from one hectare of tea.

Estate workers are threatened with unemployment situations and the worst affected would be labourers who work for a day's pay.

The cost of drinking water would escalate due to increasing costs in the purifying process. Lack of water in the lower plains would cause difficulties in farming. Moreover since potato cultivators are outsiders, the likelihood of introducing outside labourers on these plantations would replace local labourers who worked on tea estates. This would create a social imbalance in the tea estate sector.

Halt!

Environmentalists and Researchers now urge immediate action by legislators to stop the conversion of tea-estates into potato cultivations before further damage is caused to the environment as well as to other spheres of national, economical and social importance.

They also point out that there are provisions in the Conservation Laws of Environment, Land, Forest, Water etc. to legally remedy this situation at Government and local levels. -

(Information courtesy: District Secretariat, Nuwara Eliya)