Sunday Times 2
Will “Uma Oya” come to Colombo?
A news release by Nihal Rupasinghe (NR) Secretary Ministry of Megapolis in the Sunday Times of December 27, 2015 on the subject of “Colombo Flood Control System” was both confusing and unbelievable to a simple engineer like myself who has devoted more than 30 years of my life time and money on the same subject suggesting much simpler less costly technically more acceptable and natural alternatives to Colombo’s flood problem with no secrets about the proposals. Is “flood control” the same as “flood protection”?
What a lesson have we learnt from the horrible experience at Uma Oya in tunnelling when during construction the tunnel accidentally pierced an underground water bearing aquifer emptying it fully and leaving an entire village without water.
My confusion was more than doubled when I happened to listen to the same person (NR) on a TV show called “Dark Room” on the night of Jan 3, 2016 where he provided more information on proposed solutions to the problems of flooding, garbage and also traffic matters all three of them of much interest to me by experience as a practising Civil Engineer with multidisciplinary training and by proposing many possible remedial measures in these areas during the last 20 or more years, all falling on deaf ears.
Confining myself to the subject of flooding and the 16 point “intervention sites” shown in NR’s plan, leaves much room for questioning how unscientific this method is? Will it not be possible even if we succeed in solving all these 16 intervention sites mentioned, one by one, that more new flooding sites can re-emerge elsewhere unexpected? What do we do then?
While Colombo is a coastal city with highly favorable tidal fluctuations (+/-1.5′ MSL) with nine already existing independent outfalls equally favourable for gravity drainage, there was reference to measures like tunneling, widening of existing canals, building more new canals, a new “outfall” (hopefully not at Panadura), widening a bridge, new diversions, many pumping stations etc. Beats my imagination what mega disaster will come upon now peaceful Colombo after all this digging up and boring have taken place at great cost and time and of doubtful benefit.
The people of Colombo are sick of listening to similar jargon from 1990 to date specially after the experiences of the much advertised “Greater Colombo Flood Protection and Environment Improvement Project” of SLLR & DC, initially said to cost Rs. 4,000 million, completely rejected at a public meeting held at “Sausiripaya” on August 6, 1991, but continued regardless ending up costing several times more due to highly unnecessary costly civil works, during which period Colombo experienced severe flooding twice in 1992 and 2010, disgracefully drowning a part of our grandiose new Parliament too. Many lives lost and damage to property that took place not assessed, have not left our memories still. There was no semblance of any inquiry if there was professional negligence. No one was punished for this crime against humanity at least to gain the confidence of the people who lost heavily. Everything was nicely swept under the carpet.
Then what lesson have we learnt from the horrible experience at Uma Oya in tunnelling when during construction the tunnel accidentally pierced an underground water bearing aquifer emptying it fully and leaving an entire village without water? A deathblow to an otherwise peaceful innocent independent village. People weren’t fully compensated and were left homeless. It is still doubtful if the donor Iran Government will agree to bear the additional cost to compensate these people.
With this living tragedy in mind I wish to pose several additional questions as to what will happen after all this proposed digging and tunnelling are allowed to take place unchallenged if the Parliament Lake suddenly goes dry or for that matter if the Beira Lake too goes dry similar to what happened in Uma Oya? Again it is a well known fact that the tidal prism travels 10 to 15 miles upstream of Kelani river to Ambatale at times contaminating the drinking water supplies at Ambatale. Based on this experience what possibilities are there that these two lakes can gradually turn saline with severe environmental consequences? Then what possibilities are there for rapid salt water intrusion through tunnels into our ground water resources, presently mainly fresh and the resulting adverse environment impact? It will be too late for remedial action.
Last and but not by any means least important, If these proposals are by chance based on the recommendations of the little known report dated March 2010 from SLLR&DC, prepared by the “Task Force” appointed by the former Defense and Urban Development Secretary, for the purpose of obtaining a loan from the World Bank, headed by the then Chairman SLLR&DC, an architect by profession, leading a Civil Engineering organization where questions were repeatedly raised about the composition of this Task Force, it is very necessary that these proposals be double checked by a competent group of senior independent engineers with relevant hands on experience on floods and ground water studies, including the Irrigation Department before embarking on this costly Rs. 25.8 billion project using people’s money not justified under any circumstance, but highly attractive only to foreign contractors and consultants and others too.
Such a study should not in any way leave room for a repetition of the experience we faced in studying the EIA for the Port City project which has attracted many challenges from competent national minded engineers and scientists which remain unanswered.
(The writer is former Senior Deputy Director of Irrigation.)