The Mahaweli Development Project In Hindsight-by Chandre Dharmawardena
Source:Thuppahis
an original article …with highlighting imposed by The Editor. TPS
It is interesting to look at the agenda of the workshop held at GANNORUWA in August 1974 [see references below] and ask what questions (and topics) should have been raised at that time, in hindsight, in the context of a number of issues where the Mahaweli project went very badly wrong.
Although there are many issues to consider where the Mahaweli project made mistakes, I will here write on just one issue that led to the deaths of thousands of farmers, beginning from late 1990s, initially mostly in the Mahaweli C project area (I think).
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The map is adapted from Balasooriya et al 2020.
Mahaweli is all about water and settlement of people (not “colonisation”. That word should be reserved for action or process of settling among and establishing control over the indigenous people of an area, etc., see Oxford Dictionary). People were settled in new land opened up by the new availability of water for farming and for life. Many of those areas had never been farmed or settled in, even during historic times of the ancient kings when the civilisation of the land was in the Rajarata.
The topics discussed then do not look at the environmental impact of a massive irrigation project like the Mahaweli. However, the outlook in the 1960s and early 1970s was somewhat naive and environmental impact issues were not taken seriously. Even questions like schooling and play areas for children, and the medical facilities for the settlers were left as subsidiary matters secondary to the big job of hydraulic engineering.
The question of the availability of good drinking water for settlers was never raised.
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In going from the Mahaweli project to the accelerated Mahaweli project, the number of setters was increased, and many were settled in higher ground AWAY from the river or associated irrigation canals. They were given areas for paddy cultivation in the lower land, but their homesteads and vegetable gardens were higher up in elevation. As such, these settlers living on high ground dug wells close to their homes and consumed well water, while the paddy plots were irrigated using Mahaweli water.
If we consider a a village like Ginnoruwa (in Girandurukotte), it has three adjacent villages, namely Badulaupura (B), Dolahekanuwa (D), and Sarabhoomiya (S). All three villages were settled in the 1980s and almost all are farmers came from Badulla District in the Uva province. There were many other such settlements during this period, in many dry zone areas irrigated by the Mahaweli project.
By the late 1990s, medical officers noted the rise of a new type of chronic kidney disease among these settlers. Unlike normal chronic kidney disease (CKD) which is accompanied by signs of diabetes and hypertension, this new CKD showed no such symptoms until very late into the disease.
Its origin (aetiology) was a puzzle and hence the disease was named CKDu, or chronic kidney disease of unknown aetiology. By about 2005-2010 CKDu had reached epidemic proportions, causing a major health concern and breaching the capacities of medical services of the region.
A number of “theories” regarding CKDu soon emerged among the public.
(i) It was conjectured that the farming techniques that used fertilizers and pesticides were causing the disease, and that Mahaweli brought along an additional surfeit of such agrochemical residues from the tea-plantation hills that provided the catchment area of the Mahaweli.
(ii) An occult dimension was added to this conjecture when an academic of the Kelaniya University (the late Dr. Nalin de Silva) and some of his students (notably, Channa Jayasumana) claimed that God Natha had revealed that the water and the soil of the Rajarata region were contaminated by Arsenic, brought in via the fertilizers and herbicides applied by the farmers. This was also taken up by Ven. Aturaliye Ratana, a political monk, and Dr Sanath Gunatilleke, a California Medic. Channa Jaysumana, Sanath Gunatilleke and Ms. Senanayake (a clairvoyant) published a paper claiming that Arsenic and glyphosate acting with the hard water of the region were causing CKDu.
(iii) A third theory proposed by the geologists and chemists of the Peradeniya University was that the disease-endemic areas were geologically rich in fluoride, and that the water consumed by settlers who got sick contained elevated levels of fluoride.
The claim that agrochemicals were the cause resonated with a lot of urban intellectuals and politicians. Many urban intellectuals believed in “returning to nature” and “organic farming, while nationalists believed that returning to “traditional agriculture of the Sinhala Kings” was the way forward. They were able to get the popular herbicide glyphosate banned, and later they got all fertilizers banned, during the time of President Gotabhaya. These militants did not appreciate that several metric tonnes of organic fertilizer were needed to replace the few kilos of chemical fertilizer needed per hectare. Such huge amounts of organic fertilizer are not available anywhere. So, this led to the economic collapse of the agriculture sector and triggered an uprising that eventually led to Gotabhaya’s ouster.
Meanhwhile, field studies of the water consumed by the farmers, and the incidence of CKDu have (in my opinion) clarified the origin of CKDu.
Most farmers who consume water from the irrigation system do NOT contract CKDu. Farmers in the Hill country who use agrochemicals extensive do not contract CKDu. Hence the cause of CKDu cannot be agrochemical residues. A WHO study [BMC Nephrology, 14, 180 (2013)], and several other independent studies found that the Mahaweli water is not significantly contaminated with agrochemicals.
Going back to the village of Ginnoruwa, the people who lived in Sarabhoomiya village, which was close to the irrigation water system, did NOT get CKDu. However, those who lived in Badulupura, on higher ground, and who used their dug wells for drinking water contracted CKDu. Chemical analysis has shown that these Badulupura wells are rich in fluoride and electrolyte ions like Magneisum and Calcium. [Balasooriya et al Exposure and Health. 12, 823 (2020).]
When such water was fed to laboratory mice, they too ended up with damaged kidneys, as established in a key research paper by Wasana et al [Nature Reports 2017] and in interpretive studies [Dharma-wardana, Environ. Geochem & Health. 40, 705 (2017)].
Today, it is accepted that CKDu can be prevented by supplying clean drinking water to the settlers.
So, if the Mahaweli planners had, in the 1970s, done simple chemical analysis of well water in the Mahaweli settlements, and tested the water to determine if the water is suitable for drinking, a major medical catastrophe could have been avoided, and thousands of lives could have been spared.
Even the political history of Sri Lanka may have been different as there would have been no incentive to ban agrochemicals and create the peasant uprising that triggered the Aragalaya……………….
