Colombo water pipes ancient, always breakdown!
Underground water pipes laid during British rule in 1875 in Colombo city are very old and resulting in a regular breakdown in supply, a top official of the National Water Supply and Drainage Board, Sri Lanka (NWSDB) says. Board Chairman Karunasena Hettiarachchi, while conceding these shortcomings in the water supply, also revealed that there are many international donors willing to support water-related development projects.
He was speaking on “The status of drinking water supply and sanitation in Sri Lanka at a seminar on “A Day without Water: Managing Sri Lanka’s Water Resources” organized by the Lakshman Kadirgamar Institute for International Relations and Strategic Studies in Colombo last week.
During the seminar there were also startling revelations made that Sri Lankans are susceptible to unsatisfactory (impure) water and due to this factor there is the occurrences of water borne diseases in Sri Lanka like Dysentery, Viral Hepatitis and Typhoid.
Dr (Ms) Paba Palihawadana, Chief Epidemiologist, Central Epidemiological Unit, Ministry of Health speaking on “Health Issues and water quality” said that according to the results of the water sample testing of the country, 52 per cent of the samples tested were unsatisfactory and said 33 per cent of water samples obtained from NWSDB were unsatisfactory. She pointed out that more than 70 per cent of the water samples collected from districts such as Nuwara-Eliya, Vavuniya, Ratnapura, Matara and Badulla were unsatisfactory.
When it came to the case of whether bottled water is pure or not, the research showed that it would not be so. Though there are nice pictures on labels of waterfalls and running streams, the water contained in those bottles are quite different as they are extracted from ground water in wells and no chemicals are allowed to be added into that water, but only the purification process. As such these labels are misleading.
There is no difference between bottled water and ordinary well water.
Interestingly even speakers who were critical of the false messages in bottled water, drank from bottled water provided to them at the forum!
Dr. (Ms.) Palihawadana said that finding safe, ready to drink water is very difficult and said that only 31.8 per cent of Sri Lankan households have pipe borne water, 50.8 per cent have well water out of which 4.4 percent of these wells are unprotected. Another 5.4 per cent receive water from streams, tanks and rivers.
While giving minute details of the substance composite of water, she said that water contains traces of heavy metals and dissolved gases. Though municipal water is considered to be generally safe, Dr. Palihawadana cast doubts about the body’s tolerance to these agents.Water can be a specific antidote to some of the more troubling and inconvenient health problems, such as obesity and many types of cancer, she revealed. She said that fresh water in developed areas also contains synthetic agents in agricultural by-products and in other industrial chemicals and though they have not found these agents to pose serious risk to the public some environmental researchers have found that these chemicals can be very toxic to different species. Jeremy Bird, Director General, International Water Management Institute (IWMI) speaking on “Water Security- adapting to changing contexts”, said that there are wells full of contaminated water and some streams bubbling black with industrial or urban waste. He said that taps and wells could go dry and there could be parched soil in farm lands.
Mr. Bird said that water could be available physically and economically but there are no proper policies, institutions or legislation in place to make it available to all, particularly for marginalized groups in the society.
He said that these are the realities facing millions of families which lead to health risks and lost opportunities for earning incomes and securing livelihoods. Therefore, he said that being ‘without water’ has many different dimensions and is more related to economic and political considerations than absolute physical scarcity.
The seminar appeared to be another futile exercise where public interest diminished to the lowest ebb. In the final session the speakers were actually speaking to an almost empty hall where there were only a few members of the audience.
Even some of the public officials were not present throughout the seminar with at least one speaker in the last session commenting that at ‘least one leading government official’ should have been present to answer some of his queries.
Follow @timesonlinelk
comments powered by Disqus