A New Town in the Sea

L. JAYASOORIYA

It has been reported in the media that the government is going to reclaim 500 acres of sea south of the Colombo harbour and build a fancy new town on it. This is obviously not a project that will benefit the country economically nor will it benefit us by way of defence, says the writer

If the project is going to be a commercial venture the very first question that arises is whether a feasibility study has been made to accommodate the massive increase of daily travel in and out of this area due to the substantial increase of new jobs created. The Marine Drive is supposed to be a 4 lane road but the RDA built a 2 lane bridge for it near the Wellawatte railway station. The two extra lanes may form the vote bank of the local politician who will permit his men to build shops all along.

If it is going to be a residential area of 500 acres why bring in extra people into the junction of the North South bullock cart road passing the Colombo harbour and the other bullock cart road going to the harbour from the East where all the problems began may be over 200 years ago? That meeting point no longer has any relevance.

Whatever venture it is going to be, have they sorted out the problem of sewage disposal? Over a hundred and fifty years ago the British planners of Colombo had two one metre diameter pipes extending about a kilometre away from the shore, one located north of the harbour and the other at Wellawatte.

Those two pipes cannot handle the massive increase in sewage. Instead of laying another line the Colombo Municipality began discharging the sewage into the rain water pipe system many years ago. All that sewage ends up in the sea. A five star hotel was surreptitiously discharging all its sewage into the Beira Lake. The continuation of the straight road that runs south past the Nippon hotel is along this lake.

Upon examination it was discovered that the sewage came from a Five Star Hotel some distance away from the lake. They had laid an underground sewer line through public property direct to the lake. The owners instead of being heavily fined for what they have done got away scot-free perhaps because our government did not want to hurt the susceptibilities of an extremely friendly foreign government when their investors do business with us.

It is clear to me that the entire beach from Galadari Hotel to the Mount Lavinia Hotel is unfit for bathing. It is heavily polluted. The authorities are keeping it a secret. Even if you do not bathe merely by walking along the Galle Face promenade you inhale the pollution.

Will the government make a survey and let us know whether indeed it is polluted as I say? If it is so will the government put up warning signs all along the beach from Galadari Hotel to Mount Lavinia Hotel? If such warning signs are put up we will be exhibiting a festering sore to the whole world and it will have a very adverse effect on tourists.

Could that be the reason why we are exposing the public to this health hazard instead of jailing the owners of all hotels that discharge sewage into the sea where the outfall has not been located about a kilometre into the sea together with politicians at the Colombo Municipality who are responsible for connecting the sewage lines to the rain water drainage system?

There is one last possibility and that is a powerful businessman hiring a powerful politician to acquire prime land for next to nothing. This is what the press should investigate before a deal is struck by such parasites.