In an unprecedented lawsuit filed
against the government of Sri Lanka
by five infants aged between two-and-a-half months and two years,
the Supreme Court recently ordered
the operators of a private power
plant to close down its generators
from 10 pm to six am. The petition
filed by the infants' parents in
February, had accused a diesel-powered electricity generating plant of
causing excessive noise and air pollution through exhalation of fumes,
dust and vibrations.
The polluting power plant is situated in the residential area of Etul
Kotte just outside Colombo city. It is
operated by a private company,
Koolair Ventures Power (Pvt) Ltd, and
it feeds the national grid under an
agreement with the Ceylon
Electricity Board, the national power
supplier. The residents of Etul Kotte
complained that they couldn't sleep
during day or night because of the
reverberating noise of generators.
The petitioners had accused the
government of failing to protect their
fundamental right to equal treatment.
They alleged that they had been singled out for inhuman and degrading
treatment. With the enforcement of
emergency regulations because of
ethnic insurgency in the northeast, all
environmental laws in the country
have been declared null and void. This
means that the people of Sri Lanka
cannot seek legal redress on the basis
of environmental laws. To fulfil its
power requirements, the country is
supplementing its excessive reliance
on hydropower with thermal power
generation through diesel and gas turbines.
The noise levels of the Koolair
plant are way above those permitted
by the law. The permitted noise levels are 60 decibels during the day and
50 at night. But measurements taken
by the Central Environmental
Authority, the government's pollution regulating body and the
Environmental Foundation Ltd, a
public interest law firm dedicated to
the protection of environment, show
noise levels to be between 70-100
decibels even during night.
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