Opinion
Time for night soil fertiliser
A series of articles appeared in The Island newspaper connected with the use of ammonium sulphate as fertiliser versus the use of compost. I do not contest the efficacy of ammonium sulphate/urea as a successful plant/soil additive.
However, I have my doubts regarding the efficacy of compost as a successful plant/soil additive. This is partly based on my observations and on what I had read.
There is a block of land in the suburbs of Colombo, adjoining a public road. On the other side of the road is a paddy field, subject to floods, which is very regular in this area. Years ago even the road used to get inundated.
The topography of the land is unique, rectangular in shape with the section near the land, flush with the road surface, while the other end is about 10 feet above the surface level of the road.
Since 1980, no synthetic fertiliser, urea, or ammonium sulphate had been applied to this property. There are about six coconut plams near the road, three in the middle of the property and four at the other end.
The garden sweepings, kitchen refuse, which include ash from the hearth used to boil water, is dumped at the foot of the coconut plants, other than those near the road. The plants near the road (also close to the paddy field) have a good yield while the rest are a near absolute failure, at most a nut or two a month.
The kitchen refuse is allowed to compost itself in polybags served at the supermarkets. From what I understand the garden sweepings, and the kitchen refuse, forms compost.
This is in contrast to what I observed when I was a child. While schooling, I used to stay at a house near Matara. The houseowner had nearly 20 acres of land which had some coconut palms. At that time, there were no sealed toilets at Matara and Dondra. The toilets had buckets which were emptied daily by the Matara UC and the Dondra TC. They used to auction the toilet collection annually and the coconut land owners used to bid for them.
The land owner had to cut semi-circular ditches about six inches deep, and three feet away from the foot of the tree. The collections in the buckets were dumped in these ditches and covered with lime-calcium carbonate and covered with the excavated soil.
The yield was between 25-50 nuts per tree.
I was in the West Indies attached to a distillery there. The sugar complex had a library, from where I used to borrow books. There was a series of books by Lobsang Rampha, a Tibetian, who used to describe the manner in which the Tibetians handled their plantations – rice crops. He describes how the Tibetians used night soil (human excreta) as fertiliser and the high yield of the crops. Tibet is, I understand, a mountain terrain.
That was beyond me. Later on, I came to understand that use of night soil is very common in the East, and that it is being practised in the villages of our neighbouring countries even today. I also infer that a few decades ago even the inhabitants of Europe and Americas may have resorted to the use of night soil.
With modern technology, we should be able to get a better value for our night soil.
Do not forget that four girls in Nigeria were able to produce electricity using urine as the raw material, using a domestic generator.
It is high time we rediscovered our roots.
S. P. UPALI S.
WICKRAMASINGHE
Malabe.spupalis@yahoo.com.
The proposed expansion of the Kelani Valley railway line has prompted the squatters to demolish the buildings and the above photograph depicts the ad-hoc manner in which a building in the heart of Nugegoda town (No 39 Poorwarama Road) has been haphazardly demolished posing a risk to the general public. Residents say that the live electric wire has not been disconnected and the half-demolished structure is on the verge of collapse, causing inevitable fatal damages.
Over to the Railway Department, Kotte Municipality Ceylon Electricity Board and the Nugegoda Police.
Athula Ranasinghe,
Nugegoda.
On July 19, 1989, United Airlines Flight 232 departed Denver, Colorado for Chicago, Illinois. The forecast weather was fine. Unfortunately, engine no. 2 – the middle engine in the tail of the three-engined McDonnell Douglas DC 10 – suffered an explosive failure of the fan disk, resulting in all three hydraulic system lines to the aircraft’s control surfaces being severed. This rendered the DC-10 uncontrollable except by the highly unorthodox use of differential thrust on the remaining two serviceable engines mounted on the wings.
Consequently, the aircraft was forced to divert to Sioux City, Iowa to attempt an emergency crash landing. But the crew lost control at the last moment and the airplane crashed. Out of a total of 296 passengers and crew, 185 survived.
The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) declared after an investigation that besides the skill of the operating crew, one significant factor in the survival rate was that hospitals in proximity to the airport were experiencing a change of shifts and therefore able to co-opt the outgoing and incoming shift workers to take over the additional workload of attending to crash victims.
One wonders what would have happened if an overflying aircraft diverted to MRIA-Mattala, BIA-Colombo, Colombo International Airport Ratmalana (CIAR) or Palaly Airport, KKS during the doctors’ strike in the 24 hours starting March 12, 2025? Would the authorities have been able to cope? International airlines (over a hundred a day) are paying in dollars to overfly and file Sri Lankan airports as en route alternates (diversion airports).
Doctors in hospitals in the vicinity of the above-named international airports cannot be allowed to go on strike, and their services deemed essential. Even scheduled flights to those airports could be involved in an accident, with injured passengers at risk of not receiving prompt medical attention.
The civil aviation regulator in this country seems to be sitting fat, dumb, and happy, as we say in aviation.
Guwan Seeya
Plans to resurrect the Nanu Oya – Nuwara Eliya rail track are welcome. The magnificent views from the train have been described by H W Cave in his book The Ceylon Government Railway (1910):
‘The pass by which Nuwara Eliya is reached is one of the most exquisite things in Ceylon. In traversing its length, the line makes a further ascent of one thousand feet in six miles. The curves and windings necessary to accomplish this are the most intricate on the whole railway and frequently have a radius of only eighty feet. On the right side of the deep mountain gorge we ascend amongst the tea bushes of the Edinburgh estate, and at length emerge upon a road, which the line shares with the cart traffic for about a mile. In the depths of the defile flows the Nanuoya river, foaming amongst huge boulders of rock that have descended from the sides of the mountains, and bordered by tree ferns, innumerable and brilliant trees of the primeval forest which clothe the face of the heights. In this land of no seasons their stages of growth are denoted by the varying tints of scarlet, gold, crimson, sallow green, and most strikingly of all, a rich claret colour, the chief glory of the Keena tree’.
However, as in colonial times, the railway should be available for both tourists and locals so that splendid vista can be enjoyed by all.
Dr R P Fernando
Epsom,
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