Sweetening Kuchchaveli’s Wells

A young girl peers into a village well at Nilaweli, which has just been cleaned and certified by Arumbugal. Photo: Jeff Greenwald/Mercy Corps

Staff members at Arumbugal, a Sri Lanka non-governmental organization whose name means “Flower Bud” in the Tamil language, know all too well what a tsunami can do. When the deadly waves struck the northeastern coast of this island on December 26, their office on the beach north of Trincomalee was completely destroyed.

Nonetheless, the small relief organization - which has only seven volunteer staff members - was able to regroup with amazing speed. For the month of February, they set themselves an ambitious task: testing and purifying 600 wells that provide water for 7,067 households in this area's coastal villages. The project was approved and funded by Mercy Corps, with support from U.S. Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance.

The process of purifying wells is straightforward but time-consuming. The water is tested for salt and bacteria, then pumped out until the well water is at the source level. The well itself is cleaned, and a small amount of chlorine is added to the remaining water. The wells refill overnight and are checked again the following morning. Up to three cleaning cycles may be needed. When the well passes the purity test, it’s labeled with a bright red sticker. With six pumps in their armada, the group is able to service 20 wells a day.

Ananthi Waram, who lives a bit inland from the beach, stands in her yard beside her husband and their two children. A few meters away, a bright yellow pump ejects a geyser of water, which falls into an overflowing blue tub. “After the tsunami, we had to boil all our water for half an hour, five times a day” she says. “With the well cleaned, we don’t need to boil it at all – unless it’s for the children’s food. We’re very happy about that.”

Less than a kilometer away, another pump hums away on the grounds of the local middle school. Classes are out for the day, but a team of Mercy Corps and Arumbugal staff is on site. A few adolescent boys stand at the well’s rim, peering into its depths. There’s still plenty of water; it takes a hard-working pump about two-and-a-half hours to empty a well.

The ocean is in plain sight, an expanse of shimmering surf beyond the school’s water tower. Crows dart above the sand, picking at trash. This isn’t litter; plastic containers, parts of boats, even trees sucked out to sea by the tsunami’s fierce undercurrent will continue to wash up on these shores for months to come.

It’s the second pumping of the school’s well, which hasn’t yet earned its seal of approval.

“Closer to the beach there’s much more salinization,” observes John Sowinski, Mercy Corps' logistics manager in the Trincomalee region. “Even if the ocean waves didn’t fall directly into the wells, the water table itself was very much affected.”

Overseeing the process is a neatly dressed young man named Krishna, a public-health inspector for Sri Lanka’s Ministry of Health. He will independently test the wells and certify them when they’re safe.

“After the tsunami,' says Krishna, “sea water mixed with our natural water. We immediately supplied the temporary settlement areas with water tanks, and filled them with water brought from wells far inland. This was our first line of protection – but the community was forced to use water buckets. It wasn’t a permanent solution. So I requested to Arumbugal, which made a proposal to Mercy Corps. Soon, the people in the community will be able to return to their houses and working places.”

A clean water supply is at the heart of efforts to repair shattered communities and restore the foundations of people’s lives. In Kuchchaveli, where the fishing boats again line the sands, Mercy Corps’ efforts will let 600 freshwater wells nourish the people once again.