The
service this engineer/biologist duo, are doing for our nation is immeasurable in
words. Written and published in July 2011, the contents are still valid, for
they continue their work to reach out to more of our villages and those who
need their services. Am sharing their message with you with love.
Not many
among you may know Wijesundera Mudiyanselage Jayawardena (Wimoo) or his friend
and partner in affairs to do with water, Jayalth Palihawadanage Padmasiri. I first
got to know Wimoo, through my departed friend, the evergreen late Architect Geekiyanage
‘Turner’ Arthur Wickramasinghe, for they worked together at the State
Engineering Corporation in the early 70’s. Wimoo, a civil engineer, after a
stint working in Nigeria, returned to Sri Lanka and co-founded the company Link
Engineering. Associated with the renowned architect late Geoffrey Bawa in building
the then ‘controversial’ hotel project on the slopes of the bank of the
Kandalama Wewa, ‘Link’ made a name for itself for being most ethical and
reliable in the execution of its obligations and commitments.
Unassuming
man
Upon
bagging several construction excellence awards, Wimoo’s other ‘baby by design’,
Link Natural was born. Creations such as ‘Samahan’, the various Link branded Arishtas
(herbal tonics) and the herbal tooth-paste ‘Sudantha’ were the early wins for
the company. Moving on to Plenty Foods which created natural Soya products and ‘Samaposha’,
these were moulded to be much sought after products with being socially responsible
as its core value. He was also on to the manufacture of activated carbon in a
joint venture with the Chinese and now ventures to call himself a ‘retired’
civil engineer at the ripe age of seventy one. A most humble and unassuming man, if one met
him on the street, would pass him by without a second thought that, here is a
man of such achievement.
Water
quality
It was
indeed a surprise, when I received a call from Wimoo about three weeks ago to let
me know that he was coming over to our area for some work on a water
purification project. He and former senior chemist of the Water Supply and
Drainage Board Padmasiri were assisting the water supply authorities in the Ambalantota
area to set up and test a pilot water purification plant. He wanted to come visit,
in-between his work and was to brief me on an ‘interesting’ assignment they had
taken-on in the area of water quality enhancement.
It got me
excited and I was naturally interested. The village where I live is called
Kiula and it has got its name because its ground-water is brackish. Unsuitable
for drinking or for regular usage without adequate treatment, this was a major problem
villagers here had to face for a long time. This was prior to the introduction
of treated pipe-borne water, and as an experiment, we at our home had begun to
use a method of producing drinking water from the ‘air’. It is a process of
condensation of the humidity in the air, turning it into clean drinking water.
Yet, like Wimoo and Padmasiri would tell me, the ‘air’ water we drink, is not
of adequate ‘heaviness’ without any minerals in it and we would need to have
supplements of those taken orally to ensure that we stay healthy.
Lame
and the blind
Wimoo and
Padmasiri arrived one morning as planned, equipped with testing equipment and a
set of educational leaflets on a new line of work they had undertaken. This water-quality-enhancement
duo compare their engineer/ chemist union to that of a ‘Kora saha Andaya’ (the lame
and the blind) relationship, much like the twosome in the old folklore, where
one could not function without the other. While the chemist identified the
problem, the engineer would design practical solutions and necessary equipment
to overcome them.
One such
endeavour was what they described to me as their project to ‘Make a village
smile’. During a survey conducted in Sri Lanka’s dry-zone, Padmasiri identified
the remote village of Asokamalagama in Pemeduwa, in the Anuradhpura District as
one, where the quality of the water they drank was suspected to be the cause
for them to have kidney diseases such as chronic renal
failure of unknown etiology and
dental fluorosis, commonly known as yellow or bad
teeth. Wimoo, having read reports on this problem in the media, made contact
with Padmasiri, whom he did not know before, with a resolve to assist him seek
a solution.
Overdose of fluoride
A survey of the 37 wells of this village
with a population of about 1,500 people revealed that 34 of the wells had a
fluoride level of more than 3.0 mg per litre (l), while the safe levels of
fluoride stands at less than 1.0 mg/l. It was found that 56.8% of the wells had
a conductivity of more than 1000 micro-semen (mS) per centimeter (cm) showing high dissolved mineral content in the
water. Only 4 wells available in the village,
met the required water quality standard with a fluoride content of less than
1.0 mg/l.
According to them, the earlier community-based
water supply scheme had been distributing water to the village with a fluoride
content of 5.5 mg/l since 2005. As a
result of the total hardness content of 180 mg/l, measured through Calcium Carbonate
(CaCo³) being low, the taste of the water remained normal, thus encouraging the
villagers to drink it without suspicion or concern. Yet, the risks faced by them
of having dental/skeletal fluorosis, was very high with such a high a fluoride concentration
of 5.5 mg/l in the drinking water.
Tech solution
In April 2010, the duo undertook the
challenge of solving this problem for the people of Asokamalagama. Electro
Coagulation technology was deemed to be the best option and a bench scale model
was tried in a five liter capacity vessel by dipping four Aluminum electrodes in
it. The preliminary trials conducted in the laboratory showed a reduction of
fluoride by 80 – 90 % and the hardness by 40 – 50%. This success led to their
designing an electro coagulation unit with 10 tube reactors and a pilot plant
was fabricated to process 100 litres of water/ per hour capable of operating
for 10 hours a day. With a further modification of its efficiency by using plate
electrodes instead of tube electrodes, in December that year, they were able to
increase processing capacity to 500 litres /per hour. Cost of fabrication, they
said was minimal for all the mechanical and electrical units used were those
already available in Sri Lanka.
Self-reliant
According to Wimoo and
Padmasiri “women in the village were trained in
operation and cleaning the pilot plant thus empowering the village women. While the plant was a gift to the villagers,
the processed water from the EC unit is sold at Rs. 2.00 per liter by the
Community Based Organisation (CBO). Money collected is used to pay the women
operators and for the plant’s maintenance, ensuring its sustainability. Already
this unit is in operation for over ten months, meeting the average demand of 5,000
liters of processed drinking water per month, of the village of Asokamalagama”.
Some of the villagers living around the four better quality wells are still
able to use the water from them for drinking.
The processed water was also subjected to
regular water quality tests such as pH, Conductivity, Total Hardness, Total
Alkalinity, Fluoride and residual Aluminum.
The values obtained conformed to the SLS
614: 1983 of drinking water standards in Sri Lanka and is today serving to make
the next generation of the villagers be able to smile bright again without any
inhibitance and be safe from diseases affecting the kidney, preventing them
from drinking water with high concentrations of fluoride.
The message Wimoo has for all of us, is not
to be taken-in by the frills of the fancy consumer goods that adorn living
rooms of our homes, but to make an effort to focus more on the basics of living
such as the quality of the drinking water, the nutritional quality of the food
we eat to ensure that the children as well as adults of this nation will stay
healthy and strong, to face the challenges of the future.
Pix Credit: Wimoo & Padmasiri
.png)
.png)
.png)
No comments:
Post a Comment