Eppawala- a unique cultural landscape is in danger of total destruction

This nonsense has to stop and stop now!

By Carl Muller

Yet another disaster looms large in this is- land, which, I am convinced, God seems to have turned his back on, what with the stubbornly self-centered games our power-seekers play.

In The Sunday Times of January 11, last year, 'Sumedha' of Colombo, in a letters to the editor, made some most pertinent observations. We are told of how, as far back as 1942, the Japanese, in conducting aerial reconaissance over the Trincomalee area, were intrigued at the very brackish appearance of the Mahaweli estuary. After the war, Japanese records of these reconaissance findings fell into western hands and the US were impelled to conduct its own investigations. Yes, it confirmed that the area was rich in mineral deposits......... and yes, Sri Lanka was again, a fruit ripe for the picking.

But let me shift the scene. In 1971, the Mineralogical Survey Department claimed the "discovery" of Apatite in this, the Eppawala area. This is calcium phosphate and fluoride or chloride (igneous phosphate rock) and, as the Chairman, Agricultural Engineering Sectional Committee of the Institute of Engineers, G. Kulatunga said in his report, "Eppawala Phosphate Project", proven reserves were 25 million tons of Apatite with 35 million tons inferred.

Let us bear this in mind as we return to "Sumedha's" letter. He charged that a package that would suit the US was formulated and that had won government approval. Mining explorations would begin soon at Eppawala.

In his report, Kulatunga said "Freeport McMoRan proposes mining one million tons per year to produce 600,000 tons of phosphate fertilizer plus single super phospahte, triple super phosphate, mono ammonium phosphate, phosphoric acid and other phosphates". He proposed that "the by-product calcium sulphate be used in our cement industry but only as a 3% additive to cement. "This means", Kulatunga said, "that only 1.2% of output would be used locally." Also, he said that the manufactured by-product will be an enormous quantity of phosphorgypsum - 1.2 million tons annually that will be dumped into the sea at Clappenburg Bay.

What is Freeport McMoRan? 'Sumedha' made some interesting observations in his letter, when he said that the same Western power that had interfered politically in Indonesia, had obtained copper mining rights in that country.

So what is this? Some sort of cloak-and-dagger operation that our purblind potentates have closed their senses to? What we are facing at Eppawala is impending disaster. It means the destruction of the ancient Kalawewa-Jayaganga ecosystem which is part of the old-time, man-made water and soil conservation ecosystems of this country. Even UNESCO's ICOMOS programme has defined this area to be 'a unique cultural landscape that is not only a site but a monument; and that it should be conserved and used as part of all humankind's cultural heritage'.

Freeport McMoRan/I.M.C.-Agrico, to give it its full name, has proposed a US$425 million mining project in and around Eppawala; the relocation of 12,000 villagers from 26 'purana gam', according to the annual report of PT Freeport, Indonesia. This report was published in Berkeley, California last year. Professor Jonathan Walters, who taught comparative religion at the University of Peradeniya in 1991-92, added that, with mining to exhaustion in 30-odd years, there would be a displacement of 40,000 people, 11,000 families, 54 villages.

Early last year, a press conference was held to tell us that the mining of phosphates will be initially conducted in 56 square miles of land. Also there will be a six-mile security zone around this area, which zone could also be utilized for future mining if necessary. This well could be utilized by this country for the next 1,200 years! But, glory be! The rate of mining would take it all away in 12. Then, of course, we will have to import phosphates but that is "then" and who cares about "then" when we can shred the very nerve centre of our 2500-year-old tank irrigation system now?

What will be the result? There will be a hole in the heart of the Nuwarakalaviya granary about 400 feet deep. The Jayaganga will flow no more.

Writing in the "Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society Ceylon Branch, Vol. 90 1937 R.L. Brohier said:

"The Jayaganga, indeed an ingenious memorial of ancient irrigation, which was undoubtedly designed to serve as a combined irrigation and water supply canal, was not entirely dependent on its feeder reservoir, Kalaweva, for the water it carried. The length of the bund between Kalaweva and Anuradhapura intercepted all the drainage from the high ground to the east which otherwise would have run to waste. Thus the Jayaganga adapted itself to a wide field of irrigation by feeding little village tanks in each subsidiary valley which lay below its bund. Not infrequently, it fed a chain of village tanks down these valleys - the tank lower down receiving the overflow from the tank higher up on each chain" . ("Inter-relation of Groups of Reservoirs and Channels in Ceylon")

This is a living ecosystem - an outstanding example of human settlement and traditional land use. And it is now under threat because the Apatite is located at its heart. Today, over the north-east corner of Eppawala, villagers call the large rock outcrop "Pospet Kanda" - Phosphate Hill - and they all know an American mining company wants to strip the land for 56 square miles around the rocks.

Are we actually going to give Freeport McMoRan this license to kill? The cancer will spread from north-central to north-east if 450 acres in Trincomalee's Clappenburg Bay with beach front for a jetty and pressing plant are given to this mining company.

Since 1974, the huge phosphate deposit in Eppawala has been used to provide phosphate fertilizer for local agriculture. Our farmers have not harmed the cultural landscape..... but Freeport McMoRan will certainly do so. We are getting ready to send the ancient Kalawewa Jayaganga cultural landscape into the dustbin of history and allow a US multinational corporation with a history of activities that have ended in national chaos, to launch itself here as well. In the May/June 1998 issue of "World Watch", the US Environmental Journal, we have this excerpt, where the extent of damage done by Freeport McMoRan is detailed.

"It is the richest mine in the world, with assets exceeding $60 billion, and the Indonesian government received $480 million in 1996 from the 10% stake it owns in the operation. But development of this remote site, which physically occupies more than 10,000 hectares, has taken a heavy toll on the local people and their environment. Each day the operation extracts more than 165,000 tons of ore from the mountain - 98% of which is subsequently dumped into the Ajkwa river for disposal. The sediment load in the river is now five times its natural concentration, and the mining wastes have contaminated thousands of hectares of forests downstream. Environmental groups have claimed that the tailings from the mine which contain dissolved arsenic, lead, mercury and other potentially dangerous metals, have killed fish, poisoned sago forests (a traditional food source) and the water dangerous to drink.

In the face of all this are we still going to welcome this predatory company with open arms, allow it to do its damndest, tear out the very guts of this land and go away laughing like the hyena it is?

And what will we have?

* A dead, environmentally devastated land that is the richest and most fertile today. Remember that it was of Eppawala that it was said (and most seriously too) "stick a broomstick into the earth and it will grow!"

* No natural phosphate fertilizer that we could use to enrich the rest of this country and improve agriculture. This nonsense has got to stop, and stop right now!

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