THE SUNDAY ISLAND of 24 June 2011 carried a contribution by the Citizens’ Movement for Good Governance (CIMOGG) under the title NUCLEAR POWER FOR SRI LANKA? Dr Prinath Dias, former Chairman of the Atomic Energy Authority of Sri Lanka, in a “reply” published on 24 July 2011, has commented on it. There are two points on which he states that we have given “incorrect information”. Dr Dias’s contention is quite unjustified and needs to be countered.

It is unlikely that the average reader would have both the CIMOGG article and Dr Dias’s “reply” filed away for ready reference. Hence, it is necessary to recall briefly the essence of the issues raised by CIMOGG originally, as well as Dr Dias’s comments regarding them.

The first point made by us was that, when the estimates of the cost of nuclear power are computed in feasibility studies, resource-poor countries should take into account certain negative factors (which are normally ignored) to allow for the fact that a very high proportion of the investment will have to be paid to foreign suppliers and little of the project funds will remain in the country. The situation would be different for a resource-rich country because much of the investment would remain in the country, with significant benefits to the economy. A good economist would be able to assess the order of the adjustment required. A similar adjustment would apply to other forms of power plant as well, but to a smaller scale.

CIMOGG had stated that China, France, India, Russia, UK, USA and a few other countries would not have had to make any negative adjustment on this ground because they are resource-rich. It was also mentioned that Germany, even with all its resources, had decided to move away from nuclear power; Dr Dias had nothing to say on this. He bluntly declared that, by omitting the names of not-so-rich countries such as Armenia, Bangladesh, Bulgaria, Indonesia, Mexico, Pakistan, Slovenia, Thailand, Vietnam and some unnamed countries which have nuclear power plants functioning or being built, CIMOGG had given “incorrect information”. Our position is that, if the said countries had taken account of the economic downside and the other factors referred to by us, they may well have rejected nuclear power. Quoting them as examples to refute our reasoning does not, therefore, support the imputation that we given “incorrect information”.

Another matter considered by us was the vital importance of work ethic and discipline to ensure safety. These three factors are inextricably interconnected but Dr Dias has not commented on either work ethic or discipline. He has dealt with the safety of nuclear installations in isolation, giving them high marks on that count.

We had mentioned Three-Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima as the best known cases of nuclear failures. Dr Dias says that the Three-Mile Island failure did not cause much harm and CIMOGG is prepared to accept his assurance in this regard. However, he does reveal, in respect of Chernobyl, that 50 persons had died of cancer by mid-2005 and that another 4,000 were expected to die of cancer thereafter. Also, about 5,000 children had developed thyroid cancer of whom 99% were being successfully treated. Now, the Chernobyl explosion took place in a technically advanced country with excellent training, good discipline and a strong work ethic. Nevertheless, the supervisory and control systems failed to prevent “the plant operators extensively violating the operating procedures while conducting an experiment with the power plant”.

In Sri Lanka, radioactive cobalt machines meant for cancer treatment have been misused to convert low quality gemstones into higher quality ones! Without a much higher level of discipline and social responsibility than we now have, what would such employees do with a nuclear reactor? Merely giving training to technicians is not going to safeguard a nuclear plant. Such training should be based on a sound foundation of education for responsible social behaviour and good work ethics built up from childhood.

Dr Dias compares the number of probable deaths in nuclear accidents (5,000 per annum) to deaths in traffic accidents (100,000 per annum) and implies that nuclear plants pose less of a risk than being on the road. What makes them unsuitable for direct numerical comparison is that the effects of automobile accidents are local in nature and limited in extent whereas, in nuclear accidents, a few of which will almost certainly be bigger than Chernobyl or Fukushima, the effects will not be limited either in extent or time. For example, we have just learnt that Japan has banned all shipments of radioactivity-contaminated beef from the Fukushima area, it having been found that places 100km away had been affected. Four months after the accident, radiation continues to escape from the plant.

We reject outright Dr Dias’s assurance that “The next generation of nuclear reactors is being built to be inherently safe. These reactors are expected to be accident proof …”. We state categorically that, in engineering, nothing made by man can be said to possess “inherent safety” or to be “accident proof”. At most, the expectations could be “a low probability of failure” or a “high level of resistance to failure” respectively.

We concur with Dr Dias that “… the amount of carbon dioxide produced in our (coal) power plants will have a minimal impact at global level …”. Considering that the majority of the countries that have a greater GDP than Sri Lanka produce very much more carbon dioxide, they should put their houses in order first before pressuring Sri Lanka. There is a strong case for us to go ahead with its relatively small coal-powered electricity generation plants than grapple with the problems posed by nuclear power.

Most people know that energy from renewable sources is much more expensive than from coal or nuclear power. However, just as in the case of computers, the cost of photovoltaic conversion is coming down – unlike the costs of other types of electricity production. This is bound to make photovoltaic power more competitive and suitable for large-scale application.

The main problem with solar and wind power are their intermittent and inconsistent nature. As great advances are being made in electricity storage technology, because such devices are required for hybrid and purely electrically-driven vehicles, the storage of intermittent power from the sun and the wind is getting more practical and cost-effective.

Another concern mentioned by Dr Dias relates to the instability that used to affect the electricity distribution system when a number of small power sources were connected to it. This difficulty seems to have been overcome now because even the smallest amount of excess power is being bought by the CEB.

If the amount of money that is planned to be spent over the next 10 years on investigations, planning and designs of a nuclear power generation were to be diverted to developing innovative methods of storing energy (eg. hydrogen production), many intermittent renewable sources of power could be better utilized. It would be a shame if our scientists and engineers throw up their hands and say that only advanced countries are equipped to do this. CIMOGG believes that Sri Lankan scientists and engineers, given the right incentives, can produce original work as long as their organizations are not headed by crooks, incompetents or bootlickers. All of us must keep in mind that innumerable important scientific advances have been made in the past not by large corporations but by individual inventors working on their own, with minimum financial resources. The benefits of encouraging individual initiative and innovation in renewable energy cannot be overemphasized.

The speech made recently by cricketing hero Kumar Sangakkara for the MCC Spirit of Cricket Lord Cowdrey Lecture has drawn plaudits from almost every quarter. The fact that Sangakkara gained the rare honour of a standing ovation from a distinguished audience cannot fail to warm the heart of every decent Sri Lankan.  As a large part of our population, even in the remotest villages, gets heavily involved emotionally in sharing our cricketers’ dreams, successes and losses, the relevance and consequence of what Sangakkara had to say are obvious.

Sangakkara spoke of our long history.  He reminded us of the critical achievements of a few key persons who contributed to the growth and flowering of Sri Lankan cricket.  He told us with great pride of how all the members of the national team thought of themselves as Sri Lankans and not as constituents of any of our national subgroups.  He acknowledged the role played by government at critical moments where Sri Lanka Cricket (SLC) or its predecessors could not, by themselves, have accomplished certain goals, particularly where international forces were at play or huge financial commitments were involved.  The validity of what he said on these matters has not been brought into question in any of multitudinous comments which have appeared in the Press.

There are, however, a few genuine patriots and a few “patriots” of the other variety who hold the view that Sangakkara should not have spoken about our shortcomings on foreign soil but brought such matters to the notice of the SLC hierarchy directly and got these rectified.  The strictures made against him in this regard call for examination.

Sangakkara devoted around 90 per cent of his talk to the good things that Sri Lanka can be proud of and, perhaps, 10 per cent to malpractices at SLC, which would certainly have left the average listener or reader with an overwhelmingly favourable picture of Sri Lanka rather than an adverse one.  Had Sangakkara limited himself only to praising historic Sri Lanka, its multi-ethnic and multi-religious but united cricket team, and those who contributed to its growth, the cricket-savvy audience at the MCC would have wondered why he had not said anything about the scandalous state of affairs at SLC that has been receiving no small amount of publicity in the local media and the Internet.  It was his very frankness that gave credibility to the positive picture that he had drawn of our country.

Would SLC have paid the slightest attention to any criticisms of it if they had been made by Sangakkara in Sri Lanka?  Even minimally informed members of the public know the SLC authorities are shameless and have a skin with a puncture resistance that even the toughest rhinoceros would envy.  In a recent newspaper interview, MP Arjuna Ranatunga, Captain Cool himself, confessed that his efforts to improve governance at SLC were comprehensively thwarted.  All he succeeded in was making a lot of enemies by his forthright exposure of the rotten state of affairs in that organisation.

Ranatunga has revealed that, whereas he would have preferred Sangakkara to have made his criticism of SLC in Sri Lanka, it had to be admitted that his own locally-expended efforts over the years to clean up the organisation had been totally rebuffed.  To add further weight to the proposition that any local effort to cleanse SLC would have been quite ineffective is the manner in which Minister M.D.Chandrasena condemned the SLC administration for its corruption and the speed with which he was given short shrift for expressing this opinion.  All that ensued was that he was moved to another Ministry and the SLC administration he had castigated was given a fresh lease of life to carry on as before with its iniquities.

It is said that a wise man learns from the mistakes made by others and it is only a fool who insists on making the same mistakes himself in order to learn.  Sangakkara is plainly no fool.  In the light of these two telling examples, can anyone doubt that, if Sangakkara had confined himself to a Sri Lankan platform, his representations would have been blandly ignored apart from attracting the displeasure and antagonism of all those who were milking SLC?  It is most gratifying that Sangakkara did not lack the backbone to take up this issue, however briefly, in an overseas forum so that his views would be given adequate weight not only in all cricket-playing countries but also back at home.

Sangakkara’s call is for a non-partisan, non-political administration to protect the game of cricket in Sri Lanka.  In other words, he calls for good governance in the interests of improving player morale, cutting down on match-fixing, spot-fixing and other grave misdemeanours, and discouraging criminal malpractices in all their forms.

The Citizens’ Movement for Good Governance (CIMOGG) recognises that this country can never make satisfactory progress unless all citizens agree on the fundamental need for national unity and work towards it.  The unity shown by all Sangakkara’s team members – without regard to ethnic, religious or other affiliations – is what we have to strive to achieve on a national scale.  In this regard, no one has put it better than Sangakkara himself in his closing remarks, which are truly moving: “With me are all my people.  I am Tamil, Sinhalese, Muslim and Burgher.  I am a Buddhist, a Hindu, a follower of Islam and Christianity.  I am today, and always, proudly Sri Lankan”.

CIMOGG unreservedly salutes the integrity, social sense and daring shown by Sangakkara, quite apart from its admiration for his outstanding exploits as a cricketer.  We see no need to keep on heaping any more praise on him than his admirers have already done but the issues touched upon in his address need to be widely discussed and appropriate action taken.

In conclusion, we call upon Mr Upali Dharmadasa, the current Chairman of SLC, to do whatever is necessary to put right everything that has gone wrong over the past many years.  We are aware that he has enough wealth of his own already to be able to resist any temptation to enrich himself at the cost of SLC and should therefore take this opportunity to work hard and conscientiously to join the ranks of people like the late Gamini Dissanayake, MP Arjuna Ranatunga and the others who were praised by Sangakkara so that he (Mr Dharmadasa) may be similarly remembered by future generations.

China, France, India, Russia, UK, USA and a few other countries with enormous financial and technical resources, and highly trained and disciplined work forces, are going ahead with the construction of nuclear power stations whereas an equally advanced country like Germany has decided to phase out even its existing ones. What should Sri Lanka do?

There is no question that, if you ignore certain major factors which apply particularly to small and relatively poor countries, nuclear power can superficially be shown to be one of the more economical sources of energy for the production of electricity. But can Sri Lanka afford to ignore these factors? That is the question that the Citizens’ Movement for Good Governance (CIMOGG) has asked itself and offers its answers for the consideration of our technical and political decision-makers, and the Sri Lankan public.

The first point of consequence is that the advanced nuclear power countries possess the required scientific and engineering knowledge themselves. Sri Lanka, on the other hand, would have to pay a premium to gain access to almost all this knowledge and keep on paying heavily for all subsequent improvements. As in most commercial transactions, the prices quoted at the time of tendering or initial negotiations would be held at an attractively low level to persuade the customer to accept the suppliers’ proposals. Once a commitment is made and the project is completed, the supplier would be free to raise its prices for technical supervision, consumables (especially nuclear fuel) and spares. There would be little room for bargaining. This type of disadvantage would not be experienced to anything like the same extent in the case of other forms of power production, where the technical requirements are invariably far less complex. The monopolistic element would be there, say, in a coal power station as well but not to the degree of exclusivity that would be associated with nuclear power. Hence, Sri Lanka would be very much more vulnerable to extremely high price increases in the case of nuclear power than in the case of the other less complex means of power production.

The next point of importance is that most of the funds that an advanced country spends on its nuclear plants remains within that country and it is only a few items, eg. uranium, which it would have to buy from outside. On the other hand, in the case of a less developed country, 80-90 per cent of the total expenditure would be in foreign exchange and only 10-20% would remain within that country. Contrastingly, if other simpler types of plant are considered, the corresponding percentages would be much more favourable, except perhaps for photovoltaic installations. Whereas the expenditure on a nuclear power station could significantly help the economy of a country with nuclear capability, it would have a large negative effect on the economy of a less developed country. Therefore, one should take into account the collateral disadvantages of spending money on a nuclear power station in relation to its impact on the rest of the economy. This cannot be done with great precision but a good economist would be able to make a useful assessment.

We next turn to the incidence of accidents, technical failures and Nature’s interventions by first considering the hypothetical failure of large dam, which could in extreme circumstances kill hundreds of thousands of those living downstream. We may note immediately that catastrophic collapses of large dams are unknown because of the simplicity of the structures and electromechanical components, apart from the precautions taken in the investigations, planning, design, construction, operation, monitoring and maintenance of such projects. Nevertheless, in the extremely improbable case of one failing, immense volumes of water would pour out and flood the valleys below but almost everything on high ground would be generally unaffected – and certainly not anything that is outside the river basin. The effects of the flooding would be “local” in effect and could, for all practical purposes, be erased within a period of some years, at a cost that can at least be computed, albeit roughly. As opposed to this, radiation and contaminated material from a nuclear calamity could affect large areas of our planet and some of the wind-blown radioactive particles may render far distant areas unfit for the survival of most forms of life. The cost of mitigating the damage caused by such an occurrence would, in CIMOGG’s view, be so enormous as to be impossible of estimation beforehand because one cannot be certain of the way the winds and sea currents will carry the contaminated air and cooling water, or how much radioactive material would be consumed by fish and other marine organisms. The worst aspect is that, in the case of some of the biologically harmful materials which are likely to be released, their radioactivity would decay to only half the original value even after some hundreds of years. Although nuclear power promoters will say that there are stringent safeguards to prevent or limit radiation damage, there have been a number of serious and threatening precedents – Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima being the best known – that do not encourage one to lay great store by such assurances.

The fourth issue that we must be aware of is the scale of compensation that we would have to pay other countries (apart from our own citizens) for radiation which spreads outside our borders, affecting not only the land and air but all biological systems. Whilst we may be able to get away by paying compensation of a million rupees to a Sri Lankan for death, injury or a living death, the reparations that would be claimed by foreign victims could run into many billions of dollars.

The US spent long years to identify and to try to develop, within a mountain of geologically stable rock, a huge cavern to store spent nuclear fuel but the public reaction in the chosen State was so adverse that the authorities had to abandon the scheme. As for Sri Lanka, is it conceivable that there could be any place within its borders where nuclear fuel could be stored safely for centuries?

Operating a nuclear power station requires a degree of supervision and assiduity which is of a whole order more intense than that required by any other source of energy because the consequences of a major mishap in a nuclear power station would far exceed in scale those of any other type of power facility. The discipline, self-sacrifice and commitment to the welfare of the public that was seen in the case of the Fukushima disaster were so exemplary that we would have to admit that, as a nation, we have yet to reach those levels by a very wide margin. There was no looting of abandoned buildings. Queues for emergency supplies were orderly and patient. Strikingly, the personnel of the nuclear power station did not let the frightful danger of exposure to high levels of radiation prevent them from going about the work of trying to limit further damage and release of additional radiation. The most heartwarming of the stories that came to be associated with the Fukushima disaster was the offer by long retired personnel of the station to take over damage limitation and repair work from the employees currently working in highly hazardous conditions. By doing so they were trying to ensure that these younger personnel would not have their lives cut short prematurely by being exposed to more radiation than they had already received. In all honesty, could we be sure that we would be able to rely, to the same extent as those of the Japanese, on the work ethic and sense of responsibility of present day Sri Lankans? Could we leave the running of a nuclear power station to those who are not highly committed and responsible or are we going to rely on foreign personnel to run these stations? Would they be as duty-bound to Sri Lanka as they would be to their own countries? There is no use talking about isolated instances of our countrymen who have in the past sacrificed their lives to save those of others in danger. It is the whole of society which has to reach the higher standards required.

On the face of it, one could grade the sources of power for a small, developing country approximately as follows –

• Nuclear - Potentially the cheapest but with excessive open-ended risks, both economic and environmental

• Coal power - More expensive than nuclear but with less economic risks. Substantial environmental negatives

• Wind & Solar Panels - Most expensive but with the smallest environmental negatives and physical risks.

The other sources, such as geothermal, tidal, wave-activated, solar heating etc, will need a lot more study before they can become serious competitors in our conditions. Consequently, our fellow citizens may find it prudent, in the long term, to rely on the old “Chinese” adage: “Good things no cheap; cheap things no good”, and commit themselves to the higher priced but safer sources of electricity based on wind and solar panels, now that we have only a relatively small amount of untapped hydropower left.

As far as one can judge, the matters referred to above are not taken into account by those who advocate nuclear power for Sri Lanka.CIMOGG does not claim to be an authority on nuclear power or any other type of power but puts forward these common-sense observations in order to promote wide public discussion (which our governments almost invariably discourage) so that vested interests and technocrats do not puzzle us with figures which do take into account simple realities, and thereby push us into a desperate situation from which there could be no retreat.

In a newspaper article contributed by the Citizens’ Movement of Good Governance (CIMOGG) in early October 2007, it was argued that, other than in the case of a declaration of war or some other major emergency, a Green Paper or a White Paper should invariably be published outlining and explaining every significant new Government proposal so as to encourage members of the public to come up with their own views on such proposals (see the book “Good Governance and the Rule of Law – A.C.Visvalingam – April 2011” – p83). It was emphasised that virtually all Government bills are intended to deal with problems which have been known for years and years and that there could be no genuine justification for treating any of these as “urgent”, or in maintaining secrecy regarding their contents, or delaying the printing and sale of the relevant Gazettes, about which there have been many complaints in Parliament over the years. Instead, open discussion is now completely discouraged and the primary democratic requirement for transparency in law-making has become a disastrous joke. In the aforesaid article, CIMOGG went so far as to state that it was not aware of a single bill that was rushed through in a hurry since Independence that could not have benefited from some months of considered public scrutiny. Adding weight to our contention, the Constitution, too, carries the exhortation that “the State shall strengthen and broaden the democratic structure of Government and the democratic rights of the People … by affording all possible opportunities to the People to participate at every level in … Government”.

Why we raise this matter again is to state regretfully that, if the Government had set out for adequate public discussion its proposals for the now temporarily aborted Private Sector Pensions Bill, there would have been less violent challenges to its provisions. The impatience shown by the Government in this instance cannot by any measure be considered untypical. Any moderately discerning person would have to conclude that the Government had some additional undeclared agenda as well, and was determined to leave no time or space for concerned persons and institutions to study the Bill in depth and have it amended suitably. Had there been complete openness shown in this exercise, there would have been no anti-Bill demonstrations, violence, disruptions to the movement of the public at large or the other adverse repercussions on the scale seen recently – including, not least of all, the much-lamented death of a young man and severe injuries to others.

For quite inappropriate comic relief, there is also the perception that the Inspector General of Police has been nominally and conveniently “sacrificed” to cover up the Government’s folly and disregard in riding rough-shod over every objection and all objectors. The IGP’s gesture was devalued instantly when it was revealed that he had only a few days left to retire anyway. It would not surprise us if, after a brief interval, he is given a foreign office posting as compensation for his unprotesting acquiescence.

An equally important reason why Government actions will tend to encourage resort to various degrees of explosive turmoil is the more basic issue of the existence of the 18th Amendment, which has reduced Sri Lanka to a pitiful constitutional dictatorship. At the time of its hurried passage through Parliament, there was not even a pretence that the fundamental requirement for a distinct separation of powers was going to be given any place at all in the Government’s plans. In 2001, Parliament, including the then MP Mahinda Rajapaksa, had voted unanimously for the 17th Amendment – although some MPs later claimed that this amendment was faulty because it had been passed in haste! In late 2010, Parliament abandoned the 17th Amendment and replaced it far more hastily with the 18th Amendment, not unanimously but with only a two-thirds majority. Hence, every MP who voted for the fiendish 18th Amendment may be deemed to have opted to go voluntarily into political slavery, abdicating his or her independence, and unquestioningly agreeing to be subject for ever to the President’s unbounded authority. The terrible result of their actions is that we now have a system of government where the People are compelled to accept without dissent the decisions of one all-powerful person. However persuasively such decisions are paraded before the public by highly paid public relations experts as having been arrived at by the Cabinet and a free Parliament, the truth is otherwise. The factual position is that the People, having delegated their legislative, executive and judicial powers to their representatives, now find their representatives have been converted into puppets who are compelled to do what they are told – and no more and no less. This is surely a prescription for the People to turn to extra-legal methods of protesting to have their voices heard.

Even though 18th Amendment has coloured the sky a deep dark grey against the free exercise of the People’s rights, it is important that the People should not wait to act until another fierce confrontation with the forces of law and order arises. While things are calm, voters should get together into small “neighbourhood” groups and write politely but forcefully to their District MPs, with copies to the freer newspapers, making known their own views regarding the issues of importance to them. Even though one can be almost certain that there will be no acknowledgment or reply, the writing of petitions, done on a more or less regular basis, will definitely have a beneficial impact on our lawmakers’ attitudes in respect of their accountability to the People. If large numbers of voters sign these petitions, even the most thick-skinned MPs will find that these pinpricks swell greatly to become something far more painful. The People’s representatives may thereby be stirred into joint action with their equally power-deprived colleagues to play a more proactive role for the good of the Country.

Readers are probably curious about what exactly could be the reasons, other than the arrogance of power and contempt for the public, which might necessitate keeping the People in the dark about the full details and implications of the Private Sector Pensions Bill. Reading between the lines of newspaper comments on the Bill, the following may be matters which are sought to be kept hidden from the public; but one cannot be sure because they are secrets after all!

One idea is that foreign financial institutions and governments are willing to assist Sri Lanka only provided it increases savings and reduces consumption. A new Pensions Fund would be a step in this direction because the contributions made to it would leave a little less spending money in the hands of the all private sector employees and thus help to swell the State’s coffers. Presumably it would be embarrassing to admit to the public that this is the price to be paid to secure the help that is being sought from the very same IMF, World Bank and the many western powers that get bashed by our “patriots” day in and day out. The second scenario is that, when large sums of money become available to the Government, it would be so exhilarating to be able to splash out freely on the numerous prestigious projects that are in the queue for financing, leaving the next generation to pick up the burden of paying back the capital and interest. Thirdly, of even more interest, perhaps, is that the law could be appropriately formulated so as to permit the moneys collected in the Pension Fund to be invested in public-quoted firms in such massive amounts that it would enable those in power to appoint relatives, friends and sycophants to key positions in these companies and secure for them high emoluments, generous perquisites and extensive undervalued shareholdings, thus strengthening and retaining their loyalties. It may be that all three reasons are simultaneously valid.

Senior Engineers of the Irrigation Department have made recommendations over many decades to limit the damage caused to life, property and crops by floods occurring over the more vulnerable areas of the Island.  Most recently, retired Senior Deputy Director Eng Anton Nanayakkara has written to the Press (SUNDAY TIMES of 2 January 2011) on the subject of flooding in Colombo.  He has pointed out that the excavation of “lakes” to retain flood waters would be a “national crime” as these would not be a viable solution for the minimisation of the inundation of low-lying lands in the Colombo region.  His views, and those of his predecessors on similar lines, have fallen on deaf ears because it is only short-gestation-period projects (such as the construction of the proposed lakes that could be fitted into the 5-year period between Parliamentary elections) which are attractive to Ministers and MPs alike.  Politicians look for quick rewards – of various kinds – and one or more of them seem to have latched on, after the last floods in the Colombo area, to the profitable idea of excavating several lakes, ostensibly to hold back some of the runoff which would otherwise build up into floods.

Apart from stating bluntly that these lakes will not help control the floods expected, Eng Nanayakkara has also decried the damage that would be caused to the existing landscape and vegetation by carrying out these “wasteful experiments”.

In the interests of members of the public who do not have a close acquaintance with this subject, the Citizens’ Movement for Good Governance (CIMOGG) sets out below, in simple layman’s language, the basic technical aspects of the construction of lakes for flood retention as there is a dire need to dampen the excessive expectations placed in these lakes by those who claim that such lakes will help to mitigate the high flood flows which affect some localities badly during heavy thunderstorms.

Almost every adult member of the public and even most children in their teens are aware that storms occur frequently during certain seasons of the year.  Although the first storm of the rainy season could sometimes turn out be the worse than the ones that follow, the more general pattern is that some rainfall would be experienced over a number of days or a few weeks before the heaviest storms of the season occur.  Where the soil is sandy or gravelly, the smaller rainfalls which precede the heavier storms would percolate fairly easily through the soil towards the nearest drainage channels, streams, rivers, lakes or the sea without raising ground water levels greatly or leaving an excess for surface runoff.  However, in certain soils, especially those which one encounters in the lower reaches of valleys or other low-lying lands, the soil contains high proportions of clay, silt and decayed organic matter, all three of which tend to slow down the percolation of water, thus causing the water table to rise.  Whereas the steepness of the topography at higher elevations facilitates the rapid outflow of surface water, leaving little room for flooding, a rapid build-up of water levels will be experienced in the bottoms of valleys and in low-lying land.  Hence, one may expect that, after a few days of even moderate rainfall, the levels of water in any flood retention lakes and the ground water in the surrounding areas will rise simultaneously, with the result that the flood-absorbing capacity (“live storage”) left in the lakes to deal with the storms to follow is going to be minimal and, of course, far less than during the dry season.

The functioning of these flood retention lakes is not at all comparable to the effect of a dam built across a waterway, where excess runoff and percolation from the surrounding soils can be stored for a relatively long period, well above the dry season ground water levels, thus allowing time for the rains to decrease in intensity until the stored water could be released slowly thereafter for power generation or irrigation during the succeeding drier season.  In short, if one were to excavate a lake during the dry season in low-lying land so as to act as a flood retention aid, one would only be fooling oneself because the early rains, coupled with the poor percolation characteristics in this type of situation, will result in a rapid loss of the available live storage capacity, which is essential to deal with big storm flows.

There is another point that also requires study.  What does one do with the fine soils which are removed to form the ponds?  If they are to be dumped at a higher elevation, one would have to sacrifice good high ground to save poor, low-lying land.  How does one safeguard the dumped soil from liquefying into a dangerous slurry during heavy rain and flowing back into the nearest low-lying area?  Growing grass, shrubs and trees on the surface will not always work because we know that areas of weak soils and landfills, even if covered by dense vegetation, are known to “landslide” in adverse weather conditions.

Did anybody carry out technically realistic calculations of the topography, precipitation, percolation, runoff, ground water levels, extreme storm runoffs etc and then compute the usable depths and areas of lakes required, and their probable live storage, not to mention the preparation of proper documentation and the calling of open, competitive tenders, before giving out the recent contracts?  The answer would undoubtedly be a “No”.

CIMOGG has, for several years, been trying to persuade government institutions, before they initiate any kind of project, to furnish the public with timely basic information on (a) the details of the problem or need for which a solution is being sought, (b) the nature of the investigations carried out to help formulate a plan to solve the problem or to meet the identified need, (c) a comparison of the effectiveness and costs of alternative proposals studied, (d) an estimate of the time required for implementation, and so on.  Whatever be the nature of the proposals put forward, there is every likelihood that there are well-experienced members of the public who would be qualified and want, as responsible citizens, to contribute to the further improvement of all basic proposals and, perhaps, even the abandonment of unworkable ones provided that the requisite information is made available to them.

Instead, what happens generally is that almost every scheme that involves the expenditure of large sums from the public purse is hatched surreptitiously and the relevant contracts awarded, through “professional” middlemen, to selected suppliers or contractors.  Various excuses are offered to justify the need for secrecy and the hurried finalisation of contracts, which are often not in the public interest.  CIMOGG continues to plead that politicians and bureaucrats keep foremost in their thoughts that they should be mindful of the fact that they hold positions requiring strong adherence to the doctrine of public trust, which means that they should not squander public funds and assets as they have been doing for the past four decades with inceasing impunity and a near-total lack of accountability.

Leaving aside any question of financial wrongdoing, about which CIMOGG has no specific information in relation to this latest civil engineering adventure, its position is that the construction of flood retention ponds was a matter that should have been put up for a thorough public discussion before implementation.  Meanwhile, further construction should be brought to a halt.