Bottled Water is Drying up Our Wells

I want to bring to the notice of everyone concerned, the alarming rate at which bottled water plants are sprouting all over Sri Lanka.  Fifteen years ago, there were only a couple of bottled water plants, which bottled mainly 20 large cans for water dispensers.  But today, there are hundreds of plants greedily sucking up precious spring water to feed the increasingly demanding bottled water industry.  I’m afraid some unscrupulous manufacturers are probably even bottling purified drain water and selling it as pure spring water. 

We see most bottled water in the market bearing the SLS mark of quality and a health ministry registration number on the label, indicating that it conforms to national standards.

My concern is this.  Compared to a decade ago, there are hundreds of bottled water factories physically sucking water from deep underground water reservoirs.  When we use a well, we only use the water that fills into the well through a natural filtration or osmosis process.  But when you drill a deep tube to tap into an underground water reservoir and mechanically suck the water out of the reservoir, the  natural filtration process cannot meet the demand of the pump, and water is forcefully sucked from its source, causing the natural filtration process to be shortcut, and sometimes creating voids underground, which may cause unexplained sinking of the ground sometimes in the vicinity of the pump, or sometimes in a totally unconnected location, which may have been subterraneously connected to the original source.

I hear a lot of complaining by villagers and even urban well water users that their wells have run dry, or that their well water in undrinkable.  I think it is the unrestricted and unplanned pumping of ground water that has irreparably damaged our natural underground irrigation systems.  This same factor has probably affected the natural springs that feed our major rivers, causing them to run dry even for the shortest dry weather spell.

I conclusion, I urge the authorities to conduct a thorough scientific study of the  effect of proliferation of water bottling factories on the natural springs and underground water systems of the country, and take urgent measures to limit the rate at which ground water is being forcibly pumped, to protect our natural springs and thus prevent another disaster waiting to happen in the foreseeable future.

                                                                                                            M. Ayub Jabir