{"id":54932,"date":"2016-05-23T13:57:04","date_gmt":"2016-05-23T20:57:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=54932"},"modified":"2016-05-23T13:57:04","modified_gmt":"2016-05-23T20:57:04","slug":"right-to-reply-megapolis-vs-new-city-by-eng-anton-nanayakkara","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2016\/05\/23\/right-to-reply-megapolis-vs-new-city-by-eng-anton-nanayakkara\/","title":{"rendered":"Right to reply -Megapolis Vs New City\u00a0by Eng Anton Nanayakkara ,,,,,,"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ex Chairman SLLRDC<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n

First of all I would like to highlight the fact that the heading of the article in the Island Paper today 23\/5 16 has no relevance to the content of the opinion .<\/p>\n

It is like reading \u00a0part of a Life Story and a memoire of the person who claimed to have done much for the betterment of the Irrigation .<\/p>\n

Studies were done by him in the context of a much lower population in Colombo are with no value \u00a0in today\u2019s context as these studies are outdated .<\/p>\n

The claim that his tenure in the Reclamation Board was terminated prematurely for reasons he does not want to recall ,is quite amazing to read and that doors of the SLLRDC for entry of adventurer or opportunist I wonder who the writer means by this statement<\/p>\n

First of all we all should blame Irrigation department and the Land ministry under Gamini Dissanayake for dredging the Kotte and Madiwela paddy fields and reclaiming the lands for new parliament ,which is the start of flooding and the misery undergone by the people ,<\/p>\n

He also says the 1981 headline warned that parliament will get flooded and everybody laughed , and he says that 4th<\/sup> and 5th<\/sup> June 1992 parliament got flooded<\/p>\n

I assume that parliament got flooded because the wise people in Irrigation and Low lying development board have miscalculated the safe level of floods at 7 feet where it should have been 9-10 feet<\/p>\n

Actually building the parliament by filling paddy lands was the gravest mistake we ever made ,<\/p>\n

In 1993, only committee room got flooded but after few years more area in the parliament got flooded , because politicians and scrupulous businessmen\u00a0 filled 400 hundred acres \u00a0of retention area of 1000 acres reserved and acquired by SLLRDC \u00a0by 1995<\/p>\n

This learned writer claims that floods in 1992 was caused by the \u00a0illegal gate constructed by SLLRDC .As the chairman of SLLRDC at that I would like to clear this misinformation .<\/p>\n

When President Premadasa called a meeting to find a way to eradicate pollution due to toilet waste and other polluted water along St Sebastian Canal \u00a0,SLLRDC and SLPA has jointly decided to pump water into the St Sebastian Canal\u00a0 from Kelani River during drought period<\/p>\n

There was no reason for whole of\u00a0 Colombo to get \u00a0flooded due to this gate being closed \u00a0and now under world bank funding SLLRDC intends to install a bigger pump .<\/p>\n

I am unable to comment on this as I have some reservations.<\/p>\n

Again the flooding in 2010 has occurred due to illegal filling by people in lake drive area and in Narahenpita and Kotte Marshes reducing the retention area by 400 acres<\/p>\n

When I protested against building a bridge across the Heen Ela to have access to the plot where a block of flats are built I was threatened by the owner .I complained to the police and then president requested me to withdraw the plaint as the culprit was a supporter<\/p>\n

His claim about a purported gabion structure causing floods in Parliament area is absolutely baseless.<\/p>\n

I noted that various gates and bunds installed upstream of Kotte basin does marvellous job despite a flood situation near Kimbulawala few days back<\/p>\n

Filling of over 400 acre is the main cause of floods in Colombo today\u00a0 and the writer forgets to mention the facts in his article<\/p>\n

Kelani river flooding \u00a0\u00a0is due to two reasons<\/p>\n

Irrigation Department did not take any steps to control, and prevent the encroachments along the Kelani left bank which is within the river reservation and allowed politicians to fill hundreds of acres \u00a0from Nagalagam street to Hanwalla I can even name some politicians !<\/p>\n

Many container yards ,factories were built reducing \u00a0the Kelani\u00a0 Valley \u00a0basin<\/p>\n

SLLRDC had no jurisdiction to prevent construction and filling along the valley<\/p>\n

So the blame should go to Irrigation Department ??<\/p>\n

Second reason for the flooding of Kelani River bank is caused by the sand bank built up at the river outfall.<\/p>\n

I am confident that new breakwater built for south harbour is the cause of formation of high sand bank which prevents water out flow<\/p>\n

Finally I would like highlight the fact that irrigation experts who have only drawn up nice charts ,maps and wrote reports to fill time ,have never contributed in any way to control the floods by PREVENTING ILLEGAL FILLING OF THE MARSHY LANDS<\/p>\n

SLLRDC may have had chairmen of various calibre and qualifications, but it was the task of politicians to guide them in the right track<\/p>\n

During our time we were well guided and we had a tremendous task to carry out project implementation under able minsters and secretaries like Mt Aillaperuma<\/p>\n

Irrigation engineers in Colombo were writing reports and drawing charts, but none of them contributed to eradicate the unauthorised filling of lands<\/p>\n

( I was told by someone that a Director of Irrigation was recently asked by a journalist What are you doing these days as Colombo is under heavy flooding ,reply was amazing I am making some Wesak Lanterns with my children !!!!!!!!!!!! )<\/p>\n

During our time we were standing near all canal outlets of Colombo clearing sand banks !<\/p>\n

I suggest that the writer discontinues writing his article where at the end it says to be continued <\/p>\n

Ex Chairman SLLRDC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ex Chairman SLLRDC First of all I would like to highlight the fact that the heading of the article in the Island Paper today 23\/5 16 has no relevance to the content of the opinion . It is like reading \u00a0part of a Life Story and a memoire of the person who claimed to have […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-54932","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-forum"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54932","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=54932"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54932\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=54932"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=54932"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=54932"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}