More than 84,500 people across seven districts are now affected by the dry spell and more than 75,000 are receiving emergency drinking water. Sri Lanka is again deploying bowsers and drilling for groundwater, but the recurring crisis raises a larger question about what happens to the enormous volumes of water that fall when the rains eventually arrive.
More than 84,500 Sri Lankans are presently affected by water shortages as the continuing dry spell bites across seven districts, forcing authorities to supply drinking water to more than 75,000 people.
Monaragala, Badulla, Polonnaruwa, Hambantota, Ratnapura, Batticaloa and Ampara are among the affected districts, with the Disaster Management Centre and other authorities using water bowsers to maintain emergency supplies.
In Monaragala alone, around 15,000 families across 75 Grama Niladhari divisions are affected.
The Government has now begun a programme to increase groundwater availability. Some 267 existing tube wells are expected to be rehabilitated while another 100 higher-capacity wells are planned.
Those measures are necessary. Families without drinking water cannot wait for a national water-management strategy to be debated.
But emergency bowsers and additional wells treat the immediate symptom rather than the recurring disease.
Sri Lanka is a country capable of experiencing drought and devastating floods within relatively short periods. Enormous quantities of rainwater flow through rivers and drainage systems into the sea during the wet months, only for bowsers to be dispatched to communities when the weather changes.
Climate variability makes the problem harder, but also makes long-term water storage more important.
The real measure of government preparedness will therefore not be how many bowsers can be mobilised during the next drought. It will be how much of the next heavy rainfall Sri Lanka manages to retain for the dry months which inevitably follow.
The rain will return. The question is whether we will be any better prepared to save it.
