Veheragala Reservoir

Veheragala Reservoir

Veheragala Reservoir, also known as Menik Ganga Reservoir (Sinhala: වෙහෙරගල ජලාශය), is a reservoir located on the boundary of Lunugamvehera and Yala National Parks, Sri Lanka. This reservoir was constructed to drive the waters of the Menik Ganga River to the nearby Lunugamvehera Reservoir, thereby enabling cultivation of paddy under the Lunugamvehera Scheme (Hemakumara et al., 2023). The reservoir's dam is included in the 5,000 rupee note in Sri Lanka.

History

The Veheragala project was started in 2005 and the construction of the reservoir and conveys system were completed in 2009 (Hemakumara et al., 2023).

The Reservoir

The reservoir was constructed by damming the Menik Ganga River to store and divert the excess water from the river to the Lunugamvehera Reservoir, which was constructed in 1985 along Kirindi Oya River (Hemakumara et al., 2023). Although, the Menik Ganga River is one of the major rivers of southern quadrant of the island, its basin lacks major storage reservoirs and only contains a few anicuts.

In contrast, in the adjoining Kirindi Oya Basin, most of the flow from the Kirindi Oya River is regulated by the Lunugamvehera Reservoir, which has a capacity of 222 MCM, out of the total annual average flow of 240 MCM in the Kirindi Oya River (Hemakumara et al., 2023). As a result, agricultural lands depending on the the Lunugamvehera Reservoir have suffered from water shortages and to overcome this issue, water available in Menik Ganga River was diverted through the construction of the Veheragala Reservoir, which conveys about 64 MCM of regulated water annually to water-deficient Kirindi Oya Basin, while releasing about 30 MCM of regulated water downstream into the Menik Ganga River.

The gross storage capacity of the Veheragala Reservoir is 75 MCM. Its homogeneous earth fill dam is about 2,031 m long. The reservoir includes 1 concrete sluice and the main canal has a length of 22.35 km.

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References

Journal Articles

1) Hemakumara, S.P., Gunathilake, M.B. and Rathnayake, U., 2023. Flow alterations due a constructed reservoir in the Menik Ganga basin, Sri Lanka. Discover Water, 3(1). https://doi.org/10.1007/s43832-023-00049-7.

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Attribution

To Whom

LankaPradeepa.com extends its gratitude to Mrs Badra Kamaladasa (Former Director General of Irrigation) for providing the necessary photographs required for this article. All the photos are published here with the permission of the author.