Monsoon Relief
RAYMOND POON
KALMUNAI, SRI LANKA
At an orphanage in Kalmunai in the east of Sri Lanka, a child should be watering the plants, but he is gleefully spraying his friends with the water hose. The hose snakes from a well nearby, which nobody drinks from.
Look inside the well, and though the sun shines brightly into it, you realise you can't see your reflection. The water is coated by a layer of reviling sludge. It used to be fit for drinking, but the tsunami changed that. Now the water is fit for watering plants.
It is estimated at least 20,000 dug wells in the East were damaged by the waves, according to Mr Kahaduwa, an official from the Ampara branch of the National Water Supply and Drainage Board (WSDB).
The waves swept in debris, flooded septic tanks and contaminated groundwater with salt, said Mr Kahaduwa, 40, the assistant general manager of the Ampara branch. "When we try to clean the wells, we can clean out the debris and other things, but the water that comes in to fill the wells is saline."
Also, because of poor planning, the septic tank of one home may be very close to the well of another. Hence, the problem of well water being contaminated by seepage from the septic tanks was worsened, he said.
Like others, Mr Kahaduwa wonders if this year's Northeast monsoon will bring relief. The monsoon typically hits from November to January each year.
"We hope that when the rainwater comes in from higher ground and washes to the sea, it will clean out the salt water," said Mr Kahaduwa. "I think it'll take another two to three years to clean it out," he added.
However, the monsoon is a double-edged sword which may bring flooding, the most common natural disaster in Sri Lanka.
This is a problem, as some of the roads leading to refugee camps are simply gravel tracks, or built out of loose tsunami rubble so water trucks can reach the refugee camps. When the monsoons come the roads could become impassable, said the interim Water and Sanitation Delegate of the German Red Cross (GRC), Ms Carmen Paradiso.
"In some refugee camps, water trucks are the only source of water," Ms Paradiso, 34, said.
The German Red Cross runs two water treatment plants in the East, supplying up to 400,000 litres of water daily. It is one of the major water suppliers in the East, together with NGOs like Oxfam, FORUT and the French Red Cross.
To distribute this water requires a heavy reliance on water trucks - a problem should the roads get flooded.
"What the NGOs and government agencies have done is that they collected the debris and put it in a stretch 100m to 200m from the sea to form a road," Mr Kahaduwa said. "Since the road is at a higher level than the surrounding area, when the monsoon comes the water flows down from higher ground and can't reach the sea, so the roads become flooded," he explained.
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