a waste of time again-Govt. to go ahead with Uma Oya Project April 6, 2015,

Govt. to go ahead with Uma Oya Project

April 6, 2015, 12:00 pm 

By Ifham Nizam

The government would proceed with the temporarily halted controversial Uma Oya Multipurpose Project, a senior engineer said.

A ministry official said that they had taken all preventive measures to mitigate environmental impact. There was however no way the government could stop the progress of the scheme because it was categorised as one of Ceylon Electricity Board’s long term projects.

The official added that those projects could not be simply stopped due to demands of the nongovernmental organisations with vested interests.

The project would involve the construction of two reservoirs on tributaries of the Uma Oya River and one tunnel on the river itself to divert water to a powerhouse further downstream, an engineer said.

CEB engineers said that the project would generate 90MW of electricity and irrigate 5,000 hectares.

Owing to such reasons, some officials have pointed out the danger of ending up with a poor quality end product. However, others said that local engineers would look into all aspects.

Sri Lanka Nature Forum, Director, Sajeewa Chamikara alleged that launching a project without a proper plan or a feasibility study or an environmental impact assessment or any sort of permission from any relevant government agencies would set a very bad precedent.

The Sri Lanka Nature Forum, a leading critic of the project conservation was preparing to launch a formal campaign against it, he said.

However, the government would go ahead with the project for its irrigation and power generation benefits, others are more cautious and warn that the Uma Oya Watershed cannot sustain such a large water diversion project.

Water from Uma Oya will be diverted to irrigate agricultural areas near the Mahaweli River. With the construction of the Uma Oya project, yet more water would be diverted from the river. After the construction of the reservoirs and the tunnel, people living upstream of the planned tunnel are likely to suffer from water shortages, environmentalists warn.

Officials say even without the dam, the water level of the Uma Oya River had dropped drastically during the dry season, environmentalists said. After the construction of the dam, the diversion of water from the river during dry season months would drastically reduce the water available for drinking and irrigating the fields. The project would not be able to generate any electricity during the months of December-April, due to the lack of water in the river, they said.

Siltation is another problem that the project is bound to face, according to experts. The Rantembe reservoir in the Uma Oya Watershed has silted up in a very short time and lost much of its generation capacity.