From: kashyapa@ocf.berkeley.edu (senarath yapa)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.sri-lanka
Subject: Samanalawewa Dam Failure!
Date: 16 Dec 1992 06:57:35 GMT
Organization: U.C. Berkeley Open Computing Facility
Distribution: world
NNTP-Posting-Host: maelstrom.berkeley.edu


		SAMANALA WEWA DAM FAILED, AGAIN!
                                                      
                                          Nov. 7, 1992
                 By Kashyapa A.S. Yapa

[This is a preliminary version of an article that will be published in 
World Rivers Review by International Rivers Network.  Since this is 
more detailed than the one that will be published I decided to get
this to you. I hope for and appreciate your comments in usenet or sent
privately to me. Thanks. - kashyapa@ce.berkeley.edu]


Haven't you heard this story before?  A government in a poor country
suddenly wakes up and finds out that the current energy supply will
be insufficient to meet the future demand projected by its own bloated
economic growth figures; dusts off plans of some decades old power
project dreamed up by engineers in good old days hell-bent on
damming every flowing river; gets together a few foreign companies
fishing overseas due to construction doom in parent countries and gets
them to mortgage this already debt-ridden country to their
motherlands in the name of "aid"; blames the locals for lack of
experience or quality, and offers the job to foreigners where donor,
supervisor and contractor, all somehow turns out magically to be from
the same country; the companies in turn hire local technicians and
labor for dirt cheap wages while the bulk of the "aid" is piped back to 
their motherlands in the form of exorbitant salaries and equipment costs;
the project is finally complete but does not function, and nobody is at
fault!; the same companies get extra repair work, kindly financed by
their motherland but to be repaid later by the locals who are now
mired deeper in debt ...

Of course you have heard it before!  And today, in Sri Lanka, the same
story is unfolding in classic style, with added spices.  The late October
1992 failure of the second attempt to impound the Samanala Wewa
Reservoir in Sri Lanka is only the culmination of that story, but will
definitely not be the end.

The $516M Samanala Wewa hydroelectric scheme, capable of
generating 120MW of power for the Ceylon Electricity Board (CEB), a
Sri Lankan government owned corporation, contains a 100m high
rockfill dam creating a reservoir of 254 million cu.m., a 5.5 km long
tunnels and pipelines and a power station, all built by a group of six
contractors.  UK's Balfour Beatty Construction and Japan's Kumagai-
Hazama-Kajima (KHK) joint venture led the contractors under the
supervision of the consulting joint venture of UK's Sir Alexander Gibb
& Partners, Swiss Electrowatt Co. and Japan's Nippon-Koei.  The bulk of
the funding was in the form of a loan from Japan's Overseas Economic
Co-operation Fund (OECF).

The project, promoted as a major economic development to a much
neglected part of Sri Lanka 100 miles southeast of Colombo, is
anything but a development; in fact, it has become a major technical,
economic, social and environmental disaster!

The current problem is supposedly caused by a leaky right abutment
of the dam.  Different levels of geological investigations had been
carried out, including a whirlwind three-week, four-member Japanese
team study just before the funds were approved.  A detailed
investigation, intended for 1986, the year the loans were approved, was
never carried out, according to Gibb's resident geological engineer
Philip Squire ("Construction Today", Jan/Feb 1992).  A breach in
groundwater table that drained out an area of several square miles
affecting about 500 households, caused by a diversion tunnel driven
shortly after construction began in late 1987, or the presence of famous
Keragala deep vertical cavern nearby did not seem to have moved the
consultants to take more stringent measures to check possible leakage. 
In fact, the local experts were never given a say in the technical
decision making process.  A local professor of geology, Dr.
Vithanage, has publicly commented on the danger of the location of the
dam ("Sunday Times", Oct 8, 1989).  A government owned corporation,
the Central Engineering Consultancy Bureau (CECB), that became one
of the most experienced engineering groups in south asia at the end of
the dam building spree of the Mahaweli Project in Sri Lanka (probably
the only positive effect from that billion dollar boondoggle), was not
given any responsibility but were asked to provide its engineers on a
labor contract.  After the failure of the first trial impoundment of the
reservoir in 1991 due to excessive leakage through the right abutment,
CECB was only asked to table their assessments but the decisions
were made by the consulting joint venture.  An official from Japan's
Ministry of Foreign Affairs had stated in a Japanese TV program that
the leakage occurred due to an "unexpected condition" even though the
engineers conducted a "thorough study".  A far bigger grouting
operation than originally planned was later carried out by KHK
financed by a $27M loan from Japan.  Realizing the fears of the still
skeptical local engineers, the second attempt at filling the reservoir
also failed in late October, 1992.  The embarrassment prompted the Sri
Lankan government to appoint a commission to look into the matter,
and the President publicly lamented the exclusion of the local expertise
in the project.  However, the local engineers wonder whether the
responsible parties will ever be charged, because foreign companies are
known to be immune from pressure by governments riddled with debt,
poverty and corruption.

This disaster could not have come at any worse time for the Sri
Lankan government which is facing a $2 billion budget deficit.  Bulk
of the original cost of the project, the OECF loan, carries about a 3%
interest payable in 30 years, which adds to the already huge debt
servicing portion of the budget inherited from the Mahaweli debacle. 
The repair work of the abutment was financed by an additional loan
with a similar price tag.  And, as usual, all the "aid" money and more
is piped back into the donor country along the strings attached.  

The social cost of this project, nowhere comparable to that of the
Mahaweli Project, is nevertheless extensive, considering that the area
is relatively sparsely populated.  The breach in groundwater table
during construction left several rice farming villages in Balangoda area
with no water for irrigation and sanitation, and CEB trucks later
supplied only drinking water.  No reparations whatsoever have been
paid as to our knowledge.  About 500 households, mainly rice farmers,
have been "resettled" in a 1.5 acre parcel each, allotted from a tea
plantation.  With no experience in growing tea, they are now under the
whims of the owners of the large tea plantation adjacent.  One
resettlement area contains only one water well and the rivers are too
far away for bathing, making the life especially hard for the elders
(Kazuo Sumi, "No More ODA", JICC, Japan, 1992, in Japanese).

Environmental awareness may be a somewhat new concept for Sri
Lanka, but the environmental damages due to power projects are
certainly not new.  The access roads soon become illegal logging roads. 
There is usually no attempt made to limit the impact of jungle clearing
near a project, and the lands adjacent remain bare and barren for
ages.  Samanala Wewa project is no exception.  The writer can only
painfully recall the beauty of the fast flowing rivers and the elephant
inhabited thick jungles he experienced in a camping trip to the area
just a few years before the construction of the dam began.

It is no surprise that no Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA)
reports were made before the project began.  According to 1989 OECF's
own guidelines, it should decide loans only after receiving assurances
on environmental issues.  However, no EIA was prepared even when
the 1991 loan for the dam repairs was approved.  It is only recently
that Sri Lankan and Japanese governments have admitted to Prof.
Sumi, an environmental law professor from Japan, that the EIAs are
still being drafted.

The Samanala Wewa project has been shrouded in controversy since
its inception.  Professor Sumi questions the legality of financial
arrangements made by foreign companies, in this case Gibb and
Nippon Koei, on behalf of Sri Lankan and Japanese governments.  The
hurried nature of study done by the Japanese team before approving
the loan suggests that a deal may have already been made.  Leaving
out the leading consulting group in Sri Lanka, CECB, from the project
management, a stark omission by CEB, raises doubts on the client's
motives.  Especially, the attempt by a coal power enthusiast, an
engineering consultant to CEB, to hurl mud at environmentalists, to
whitewash the lack of planning on energy policy in CEB and to cover
up the technical problems at the dam ("The Island International", April
22, 1992) is quite disturbing.  Since the first failure of the dam, there
seems to have been no attempt by any party to investigate the issues
of professional negligence.  Even at this stage, faced with the enormous
cost of new repairs, if at all the dam could be repaired, it is doubtful
whether the Sri Lankan government has the will or the means to go
after the responsible parties.  It seems that only the intense pressure
from international community on individual governments and the
companies involved will be able to do justice for the generations and
generations of Sri Lankans to come, who will end up footing the bill.
Newsgroups: soc.culture.sri-lanka