The local engineering expertise that could save our ocean

By Surya Vishwa 

Chinthaka Waragoda is an engineer in the truest sense of the word. He is the owner of an engineering company that has made a solution for cleaning the ocean of pollutants, including micro particles; the kind of innovation the world has never seen. He has got the highest approval for it from the relevant international subject specialists. 

However, the calamity even worse than the MV X-Press Pearl ship disaster where 1,486 containers of 25 tons of nitric acid, plastic and chemicals ended up in Lankan seas and in the bodies of our fish and corals and our shores where the harm to our natural heritage is beyond description is that we do not seem to have an in-country system to maximise from the potential of our local expertise.

Chinthaka, a self-taught engineer, has for the past three months used his innovation to clear Lankan seas of an assortment of scorched toxic elements; having spent around Rs. 50 million which is a collective of all his profits from other engineering inventions.

The International Tanker Owners Pollution Federation (ITOPF) which is described as a global not for profit organisation is currently the entity that the Sri Lankan Government depends on to clean the Lankan sea territory of the killer-toxic garbage bin it has become. 

Exactly how much of compensation the Sri Lankan Government has received from the company responsible for the ship is unclear but what is clear is that the Lankan-based accommodation and cost of dozens of visiting foreign ‘experts,’ ‘consultants’ and ‘specialists’ used for the cleaning of Lankan seas   run into a basic amount of Rs. 50,000 per day for food, travel and overall miscellaneous cost alone. How these experts are paid or the allowances they receive no one knows.

In comparison the amount that the Lankan Government would have to pay a committed local expert such as Chinthaka Waragoda for his invention which has received the approval for its trial run by ITORP is a pittance. 

Yet without receiving even this amount which could be categorised as monetary pittance from Sri Lanka, Chinthaka day-in and day-out visits the Sarakkuwa beach in Negombo and cleans the Lankan seas as best as he can. Usually encased in a pristine idyllic setting, the Sarakkuwa beach is today a wreck of plastic. It is a hazard to even step onto the blackened shores replete with plastic and dead crabs.

This writer visited this beach last week to meet Chinthaka with a friend who is assisting this true patriot of Sri Lanka to give him his due recognition for his struggle to save our island from the fires of ignorance and uncaring lethargy.

“What is being done in general by many who are involved in cleaning the sea from the MV X-Press Pearl ship disaster is like cleaning the sea of the toxic pollutants with a yoghurt spoon,” quipped my friend who introduced me to this innovator. 

I interviewed him surrounded by samples of the extracted pollutants and the range of equipment invented and used by this engineer. Using the staff of his company, CRS Holdings which has been working with construction and engineering innovation for over 13 years, he explained that his university is the whole of the universe, in typical fashion that ancient Lankans used to draw on for their knowledge. 

Among the local experts visiting him to see his work at the Negombo beach are university qualified Lankan engineers who have never come anywhere near mastering either the techniques or the knowledge infused with creation and wisdom. 

When I visited the Negombo beach there were two chemical engineers from Peradeniya University who had come there to learn from what they saw.

Following is a brief interview with Chinthaka Waragoda on the concept of knowledge, innovation and love for country.

Q: You have never studied engineering from a university ?

No. 

Q: How can you come up with complex solutions like this if you have not?

If I had gone to university I doubt it if I could have done what I am doing. The universe has all the knowledge there is for us to tap. I tap this knowledge. With silence and being one with nature we can tap into that knowledge. This is what I have been doing. 

Q:  How did you come about creating this very complicated looking heavy machinery for a hitherto not yet found way to clear oceans of the aftereffects from the kind of disaster we had?

I think the rest of the world has not yet made such a machine because nowhere have they faced the kind of ocean-destroying tragedy that we had. People have forgotten it now but I do not think we will get over the impact of this for even a thousand years. How long does it take for a coral to grow? What will happen when the fish start dying? 

As for me I look at a problem and then I think of finding the solution. This is what I did with this series of machines. I was just another Sri Lankan watching the news when they showed this burning ship on television. Thereafter I did my research. I went to the beach and I observed many things. I silenced my mind. Soon after it was very clear to me what I should do and how. 

Q: You said the International Tanker Owners Pollution Federation (ITOPF) was happy with your innovation?

Yes. They had never seen anything like this and after I got in contact with them they gave their highest praise for the trial run of the cleaning. In the next stage I innovated so that the chemical aspect of the disaster is completely removed from the ocean. This is the most difficult and many international and local experts shrug it off as something that will recede with time. They do this because they do not have yet have such an innovation.

Q: If you get the support for this how long will it take?

Minimum of around three months. 

Q: Are some of the international experts who supported your initial efforts to remove visible pollutant particles still supporting your unwavering commitment to fully purify the ocean of the chemical/oil elements?

I do not wish to comment on this in detail. I do my duty by my country. I have repeatedly asked the Sri Lankan Government representatives, especially the Marine Environment Protection Authority (MEPA), the main body responsible for the subject concerned to listen, and understand that it is possible to fully purify the Lankan waters of this absolute tragedy that befell Lanka. The foreign experts may not say this because they may not hold this view. 

Q: Have you spoken to President Gotabaya Rajapaksa on this matter?

No. I have approached various people to meet the President but to no avail up to now. 

Q: In your earlier discussion with me, you said that you have done extensive research by spending days on the beach to observe how the natural world has changed upon the beach. What have you observed in this research?

Terrible things. Dead fish and crabs. Crabs which crawl limping. It is depressing to even describe all what I observed. The disaster is that we have not realised the extent to which this calamity will affect all of the country, the health of the people, livelihoods and the natural heritage in multiple ways. The impact of this is right round Sri Lanka. 

It is ridiculous to think that just a few months or rain will remove this unimaginable damage. Imagine the health risk; the fish are eating these plastic pellets, are affected by the chemicals and the oil and the entire gamut of toxins. We eat the fish. The very air that we breathe and the ocean is affected. Unless we clear the ocean in full, focusing on all of the visible and invisible toxins and matter, our natural environment remains totally destroyed. 

Q: You spoke at length about how the health of the masses are affected by this disaster. Could you speak of this COVID backdrop?

 (Laughs).

Q: You did not take the vaccine?

(Laughs). I am quite adequately vaccinated by my understanding of how my body functions in health and ill health. I also know that we are all part of nature. When it rains my entire family have a nice rain bath. We never get colds. Mother earth, of which humans are part of, is our guide for almost everything in life. It is only when we deviate that we become strangers to ourselves and that which we call knowledge is but something that we have not grasped with our true mind or our hearts.