Asokamalagama will smile bright again...

Not many among you may know Wijesundera Mudiyanselage Jayawardena (Wimoo) or his friend and partner in affairs to do with water, Jayalth Palihawadanage Padmasiri. I first got to know Wimoo, through my departed friend, the evergreen late Architect Geekiyanage ‘Turner’ Arthur Wickramasinghe, for they worked together at the State Engineering Corporation in the early 70’s. Wimoo, a civil engineer, after a stint working in Nigeria, returned to Sri Lanka and co-founded the company Link Engineering.

Associated with the renowned architect late Geoffrey Bawa in building the then ‘controversial’ hotel project on the slopes of the bank of the Kandalama Wewa, ‘Link’ made a name for itself for being most ethical and reliable in the execution of its obligations and commitments.

Unassuming man

Upon bagging several construction excellence awards, Wimoo’s other ‘baby by design’, Link Natural was born. Creations such as ‘Samahan’, the various Link branded Arishtas (herbal tonics) and the herbal toothpaste ‘Sudantha’ were the early wins for the company. Moving on to Plenty Foods which created natural Soya products and ‘Samaposha’, these were moulded to be much sought after products with being socially responsible as its core value. He was also on to the manufacture of activated carbon in a joint venture with the Chinese and now ventures to call himself a ‘retired’ civil engineer at the ripe age of 71. A most humble and unassuming man, if one met him on the street, would pass him by without a second thought that, here is a man of such achievement.

Water quality

It was indeed a surprise, when I received a call from Wimoo about three weeks ago to let me know that he was coming over to our area for some work on a water purification project. He and former senior chemist of the Water Supply and Drainage Board Padmasiri were assisting the water supply authorities in the Ambalantota area to set up and test a pilot water purification plant. He wanted to come visit, in-between his work and was to brief me on an ‘interesting’ assignment they had taken-on in the area of water quality enhancement.

It got me excited and I was naturally interested. The village where I live is called Kiula and it has got its name because its ground-water is brackish. Unsuitable for drinking or for regular usage without adequate treatment, this was a major problem villagers here had to face for a long time. This was prior to the introduction of treated pipe-borne water, and as an experiment, we at our home had begun to use a method of producing drinking water from the ‘air’. It is a process of condensation of the humidity in the air, turning it into clean drinking water. Yet, like Wimoo and Padmasiri would tell me, the ‘air’ water we drink, is not of adequate ‘heaviness’ without any minerals in it and we would need to have supplements of those taken orally to ensure that we stay healthy.

Lame and the blind

Wimoo and Padmasiri arrived one morning as planned, equipped with testing equipment and a set of educational leaflets on a new line of work they had undertaken. This water-quality-enhancement duo compare their engineer/chemist union to that of a ‘Kora saha Andaya’ (the lame and the blind) relationship, much like the twosome in the old folklore, where one could not function without the other. While the chemist identified the problem, the engineer would design practical solutions and necessary equipment to overcome them.

One such endeavour was what they described to me as their project to ‘Make a village smile’. During a survey conducted in Sri Lanka’s dry-zone, Padmasiri identified the remote village of Asokamalagama in Pemeduwa, in the Anuradhpura District as one, where the quality of the water they drank was suspected to be the cause for them to have kidney diseases such as chronic renal failure of unknown etiology and dental fluorosis, commonly known as yellow or bad teeth. Wimoo, having read reports on this problem in the media, made contact with Padmasiri, whom he did not know before, with a resolve to assist him seek a solution.

Overdose of fluoride

Cases of Dental Fluorosis in Asokamalagama

A survey of the 37 wells of this village with a population of about 1,500 people revealed that 34 of the wells had a fluoride level of more than 3.0 mg per litre (l), while the safe levels of fluoride stands at less than 1.0 mg/l. It was found that 56.8 percent of the wells had a conductivity of more than 1,000 micro-semen per centimetre (cm) showing high dissolved mineral content in the water. Only four wells available in the village, met the required water quality standard with a fluoride content of less than 1.0 mg/l.

According to them, the earlier community-based water supply scheme had been distributing water to the village with a fluoride content of 5.5 mg/l since 2005. As a result of the total hardness content of 180 mg/l, measured through Calcium Carbonate (CaCo3) being low, the taste of the water remained normal, thus encouraging the villagers to drink it without suspicion or concern. Yet, the risks faced by them of having dental/skeletal fluorosis, was very high with such a high a fluoride concentration of 5.5 mg/l in the drinking water.

In April 2010, the duo undertook the challenge of solving this problem for the people of Asokamalagama. Electro Coagulation technology was deemed to be the best option and a bench scale model was tried in a five litre capacity vessel by dipping four Aluminum electrodes in it. The preliminary trials conducted in the laboratory showed a reduction of fluoride by 80 - 90 percent and the hardness by 40 - 50 percent. This success led to their designing an electro coagulation unit with 10 tube reactors and a pilot plant was fabricated to process 100 litres of water/per hour capable of operating for 10 hours a day. With a further modification of its efficiency by using plate electrodes instead of tube electrodes, in December that year, they were able to increase processing capacity to 500 litres /per hour. Cost of fabrication, they said was minimal for all the mechanical and electrical units used were those already available in Sri Lanka.

Self-reliant

According to Wimoo and Padmasiri “women in the village were trained in operation and cleaning the pilot plant thus empowering the village women. While the plant was a gift to the villagers, the processed water from the EC unit is sold at Rs. 2.00 per litre by the Community Based Organization (CBO).

“Money collected is used to pay the women operators and for the plant’s maintenance, ensuring its sustainability.

Already this unit is in operation for over ten months, meeting the average demand of 5,000 litres of processed drinking water per month, of the village of Asokamalagama”. Some of the villagers living around the four better quality wells are still able to use the water from them for drinking. The processed water was also subjected to regular water quality tests such as pH, Conductivity, Total Hardness, Total Alkalinity, Fluoride and residual Aluminum. The values obtained conformed to the SLS 614: 1983 of drinking water standards in Sri Lanka and is today serving to make the next generation of the villagers be able to smile bright again without any inhabitance and be safe from diseases affecting the kidney, preventing them from drinking water with high concentrations of fluoride.

The message Wimoo has for all of us, is not to be taken-in by the frills of the fancy consumer goods that adorn living rooms of our homes, but to make an effort to focus more on the basics of living such as the quality of the drinking water, the nutritional quality of the food we eat to ensure that the children as well as adults of this nation will stay healthy and strong, to face the challenges of the future.

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