Elephant Bath

Elephant Bath

Elephant bath, it was where everybody who visits Kandy go to see elephant when it is not the Pereharas season. Botanical garden and Elephant bath were two landmarks of visit to the city.

Now no more thanks to development projects like Polgolla dam to divert water to the dry zone.

I must address an issue that this dam caused after its opening I must retell this story for the present engineers to understand the need to release water downstream regularly to avoid similar episodes.

The downstream water spilled over the dam was not enough to cover the river bed. Soon water pools begin to form and the mosquitoes started breading in them. For the first time we started detecting Malaria in Kandy. Any place under 45oo feet Malaria mosquito can breed.

Then water samples collected with mosquito larvae confirmed that Malaria mosquito was breeding in Kandy for the first time.

Now the remedy was to spray DDT on the river bed.

This was actually the consolidation phase of Malaria campaign and we prematurely relaxed spraying with the recommendation of the WHO.

Story circulating at that time was that the resident Malaria Campaign Officer who was  a foreigner, fearing his job would be axed if we successfully completed the campaign gave wrong signal to withdraw spraying prematurely.

In any case by the time of the opening of the Polgolla Dam in 1976, the malaria had spread all over and Kandy was relatively immune.

Now spraying the river bed was no feasible with people using it for bathing.

Our public officers gave the Mahaweli an order to intermittently release the water giving them correct instruction considering the life cycle of the Malaria larvae, so that the larvae get destroyed before they become mature mosquitoes.

This was a simple remedy but was very effective to arrest malaria spread in Kandy.

I do not think they still practice this simple remedy. One visit to Earl's Reagent Hotel is enough to witness whether they are practicing common sense.

Now it was only yesterday I went to Kandy to buy something double sided sticker to stick the Telephone box to the wall. I was going from from one conner of the city to the other corner  find the same without any success.

At one point the cross road and the main were blocked and people were getting ready (some Bank organizing the thing) a procession.

Very young elephant with soaring sun beating down was covered with a decorated overcoat and was kept waiting till the men and the retinue got ready.

This poor animal while baking himself in the sun was trying to lift foot/feet in rotation, giving some respite to the burning feet (it was like the restless feet of old people who suffer from a similar burning but less distressful to the owner).

It was a pathetic sight to watch and mahout was nonetheless not bothered about the young animals welfare.

They are only exhibits without real life away from the jungle habitat.

Mind you, I am one is totally against domesticating these majestic creatures.

Ill treatment is totally unacceptable.

Not only they have lost a place for bathing they have lost all sense of wellbeing under human care in this Buddhist country.

These majestic animals love water and water is a sport for them and that is how they keep them cool under a thick skin.

With global warming and even in Kandy temperature going above 95 degrees Fahrenheit, they have no comfort zone.

It is criminal. Not only humans even animals need water for survival and that water has to be good for drinking.

Which is not true today.

Some things that will happen when Sethusundarum is busy with OIL/GAS exploration.

Some things that will happen when Sethusundarum is busy with OIL/GAS exploration.

Little Unknown Facts about Petroleum.

1. I am bit proactive and when the next budget of ours comes boomeranging to us there is nothing exciting to declare but I am sure they will say they hit the biggest ( but how big they won't say) deposit of GAS/OIL to divert the attention of the voter.

2. Extract and refining takes a big toll on water.

That is what I am focusing below.

It will be in little doses since I have 12 months to explore.

Fossil-fuel extraction and processing can lead to contamination of sources of drinking water with a wide variety of contaminants that threaten human health. When drinking water is contaminated, communities have three basic choices:

(1) find an alternative source of water,

(2) treat water before drinking it, or

(3) drink contaminated water and risk adverse health outcomes.

Often, alternative water sources can be much more expensive; for example, in the United States bottled water can be thousands of times more expensive than tap water or may require traveling long distances at a high energy cost (Gleick and Cooley 2009).

In addition to being costly, using bottled water also requires being able to lift and transport the bottles, resulting in disproportionate hardship for the elderly, disabled, and poor.

The major human community impacts associated with fossil-fuel refining, processing, and use are related to air quality.

However, all of these processes can also contaminate drinking water sources with a variety of toxins.

In the state of São Paulo, Brazil, for example, improper disposal of toxics at a petrochemical facility caused contamination of nearby drinking water wells (Harden et al. 2002). In the U.S., one estimate puts releases of petroleum by-products by oil refineries at 50,000 barrels per day; about a quarter of total petroleum refining toxic releases in the U.S. are to water systems (O’Rourke and Connolly 2003).

A growing concern is the link between hydraulic fracturing, a process that injects water mixed with a complex and often proprietary blend of chemicals to enhance methane recovery, and contamination of drinking water supplies with benzene, methane, radiation, and other chemicals. Although practitioners claim there is no conclusive evidence to link fracking to contamination of surface-water and groundwater supplies, critics claim that more than 1,000 cases of such contamination can be traced to fracking, as well as to incidental surface spills and leaks of fracking chemicals (Lustgarten 2008, Urbina 2011).

Fracking also can create links between natural gas itself and groundwater, in some instances increasing methane concentrations in drinking water to such an extent that tap water can be ignited. From the limited information on chemicals used in hydraulic fracturing that is available, either through voluntary disclosure or in states that require disclosure, we know that chemicals that can potentially cause respiratory problems or harm to the nervous and reproductive systems are used (Berkowitz 2009).

Recent U.S. Geological Survey research has found evidence for a link between Balkan Endemic Neuropathy (BEN) and coal mining. BEN is a degenerative kidney disease that occurs in clusters in rural villages in the Balkan Peninsula and eventually leads to complete kidney failure. An estimated 25,000 people currently suffer from this disease, which was first described medically in 1956 (USGS 2001). However, the cause of the disease is still not known for certain. Patients with BEN also have a high occurrence of normally rare upper urinary tract cancers.

Acid precipitation causes a host of ecological impacts, especially to aquatic resources.

Acid precipitation—primarily generated by coal combustion—can increase the mobility of aluminum and other metals in aquatic systems, leading to mortality of fish and Coal mining has been linked to severe drinking water contamination in many coal mining regions. For example, in the state of Orissa, India, communities’ drinking water was contaminated as a result of coal mining and processing activities. Women are particularly at risk for adverse health effects resulting from exposure to this contaminated water, as they are responsible for many household activities that involve contact with water, such as collecting the water, washing clothes and utensils, and bathing children(Murthy and Patra 2006). Some villages were even forced to relocate after groundwater was contaminated due to coal mining activities (Murthy and Patra 2006).

In the U.S.,coal mining in the Appalachian region has led to contamination of groundwater drinking supplies.