Development: DART Water Mission

DART water team at work

    
DART Water Mission

This describes work in Sri Lanka after the tsunami hit the east coast in 2004     

Local borehole and pump

The recent DART mission to Sri Lanka was located in Ampara district on the east coast of Sri Lanka. This was the region that was the worst hit on the island, with a total of 10,000 of the island’s 30,000 deaths being recorded there. The DART installed 4 reverse osmosis units in two sites in Ampara district. Each one of these units was able to purify 50,000 litres a day of water from a nearby lagoon.

I visited the northern location of the DART water supply point while I was also in Sri Lanka helping with the relief efforts related to water supply and sanitation. The soldiers at the DART water supply point were doing a heroic effort. They lived in simple conditions and worked tirelessly for the period of over a month while they were there. They water they purified was able to keep a steady stream of water trucks supplied with water for the many nearby refugee camps that housed survivors of the recent tsunami disaster.

As we all know, the DART mission was not without its own difficulties. It was a expensive effort, costing 15 million dollars to mount this mission. One may say that the cost of providing immediate disaster relief should not be questioned when human lives are at stake. This is true, but that expense becomes debatable if a means to achieve the same objective at lower cost can be found.

The DART mission was also a slow mission. It took some time for the Canadian government to mobilize the resources to get the mission moving. To the amazement of many, Canada did not have the transport planes to move this heavy equipment to Sri Lanka. We had to rent Russian cargo planes to do this. This fact both slowed down the operation and increased the cost.

As a Canadian water engineer working in the same region in which the DART water teams were at work, I discovered facts on the ground that caused me to have concerns about the way that DART missions are implemented. The DART water teams happened to be located in a region of Sri Lanka where shallow groundwater resources could have been rapidly exploited. As an example of this, at Kaluthavalai, a few kilometres from the location of the northern DART water point, the local government drilled a borehole 10 m deep that yielded fresh drinkable groundwater at a depth of 2 m. This borehole was equipped with a small water pump and was supplying water trucks with drinking water. The flow from one of this borehole was easily equal to one of the DART water purification units. The local government unit, called Pradeshiya Sabha has now located two more sites where they are planning to install two more such water supply points. Because of the sedimentary soil in the area, these boreholes can be drilled quickly at a very low cost. The cost of drilling a borehole is $125! The entire cost of borehole, pump, piping and shelter is $800.

As a result of this experience I have been forced to rethink the whole DART concept as it applies to disaster relief in faraway countries. First of all, I freely admit that hindsight is wonderfully accurate and that it is in fact difficult to find optimal solutions quickly when one is surrounded by the kind of crisis atmosphere that occurs after an emergency. This being said, now with the leisure of more time to reflect, I believe that a rethinking of the entire DART concept, at least in terms of water supply, is in order.

Was there not another way to address the Asian tsunami crisis? The very fact that Canada had a DART unit on hand meant that there was tremendous public pressure to do something and use the DART! As a result, military personnel rushed to the scene to find the best location to install the DART. Suppose, however, that we had rushed experienced personnel to the scene, both in the water supply and medical fields, with a different mandate or terms of reference, i.e. “to find the most appropriate response, including the use of local techniques, materials and personnel, to solve the problem at hand.” In other words, suppose we sent skilled people to the region to do a very rapid assessment and feasibility study in order to look at all possible responses to the emergency. Suppose we were not constrained to use our heavy and sophisticated DART technology. We could have made sending the DART one of the possible responses to the emergency, but not the only response. In the Ampara district of Sri Lanka, this might have meant Canadian assistance to local efforts to exploit their own water resources to meet the emergency. This assistance might have been able to find a solution that was not only quicker and more efficient, but also much less expensive.

The difficulty with assisting local efforts is that this requires a quick and accurate knowledge of local conditions. This would require working with local people who have been severely disoriented and emotionally shattered by the crisis. One would thus need to rely on nearby local personnel not affected by the tragedy, and more likely by other long-term expatriate groups with a thorough knowledge of conditions in the field.

What I am advocating is quick consultation with all affected groups to find the most appropriate solution - as opposed to rushing in heavy and advanced technology to emergency situations in developing countries. I am writing as a water resources engineer. I have come to this position as a result of long experience overseas working in water supply and sanitation in many different conditions overseas. I have lived and worked in Africa for 8 years and have worked on water projects in Latin America, Asia and the Middle East over a span of about 40 years.

I realize that the above issue is complex and involves more than technical aspects. Let us  imagine, however, how Canada might have responded differently to the acute water supply needs of Sri Lanka. Suppose we arrived there quickly and had liaised with the local personnel, assessed that groundwater resources were available that could be quickly tapped at $125 a borehole and could be drilled in one day.  At this price one can afford to have a few dry holes, or even unusable saline water holes while one searched for new viable water sources. Suppose that with Canadian assistance boreholes with small pumps could have been quickly set up. Imagine if you will, locally developed water supply points that were rapidly established, each with Sri Lankan and Canadian flags flying at the sites. These flags would reflect the mutual action of our two countries to provide water during the crisis. Granted with the above solution, no Canadian equipment would have been used, but is an emergency situation the place to be promoting Canadian-made goods?

There are problems with the above scenario of course. Normally the exploitation of groundwater resources is a long-term task. The fact that relatively shallow wells yielding good drinking water were readily available in Ampara is unique to that situation. However in other situations, there may be other local solutions available, such as the expansion of existing water sources (piped or groundwater), the rapid exploitation of rainwater should the crisis occur during heavy rains - and of course, the rapid treatment and desalination of saline water as was practiced by the DART in Ampara.

The objective should be to find the most effective response to the emergency, one of which could be to bring in heavy equipment in from Canada. The response chosen should be the most cost effective and the most rapid. In most situations there are often a variety of options, many of which may often be quicker and less costly that importing DART technology.

As a result of what I saw in Sri Lanka I question the use of DART for emergency water supply as it is now constituted. So how could the DART water supply units best be employed? These units could be limited to use in Canada. Here the transportation costs would be lower and the response time more rapid. But even here, we may find after a rapid analysis, that there are other ways to supply quick drinking water during emergencies.

In conclusion, instead of having heavy advanced technology on standby, we should have skilled personnel on standby, ready to rush to emergency disaster situations and make rapid assessments as to the best response - one of which may be to send the DART water purifiers abroad. However, a locally designed solution to a water emergency may be more rapid and efficient and less expensive.

Water Resources Engineer, Ottawa, Canada