ECONOMYNEXT – Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe laid the foundation to build a 209 million cubic metre (169,000 acre feet) reservoir across Sri Lanka’s Malwatu Oya, which will provide drinking water for 50,000 families in three communities and provide water to expand cropping seasons and also fruit cultivation.
“We have cannot stay use traditional agricultural practices, we have to move to modern agriculture,” Wickremesinghe said.
The Lower Malwathu Oya Reservoir will create 284 hectares of new paddy land mainly for resettled families and 527 hectares for fruit cultivation and commercial agriculture using lift irrigation, according to Department of Irrigation plans.
In addition water from the reservoir will provide water for additional cropping in 12,435 hectares of land already irrigated by Giant’s Tank and Akatimurrupu tank, which do not have sufficient water.
Water from the reservoir will helped produce an extra 24,450 metric tonnes of paddy, 16,750 metric tonnes of maize, 360 metric tonnes of green gran and 2,340 metric tonnes of soya beans.
About 5 million cubic metres from the tanks will provide drinking water to Cheddikulal, Thanthirimale townships and several areas in Anuradhapura and Vavuniya districts.
As a result reservoir had been dubbed the ‘reconciliation tank’
A 1MegaWatt power plant is also expected to general 4.5 GigaWatts of power using irrigation water releases.