{"id":107038,"date":"2020-09-27T15:53:56","date_gmt":"2020-09-27T22:53:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=107038"},"modified":"2020-09-28T15:41:33","modified_gmt":"2020-09-28T22:41:33","slug":"mahaveli-is-a-success-but","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2020\/09\/27\/mahaveli-is-a-success-but\/","title":{"rendered":"Mahaveli is a success. But \u2026."},"content":{"rendered":"

Chanaka Bandarage<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n

The Mahaveli\nDevelopment Program is the largest multipurpose national development program of\nSri Lanka. The program included irrigation development of about 365,000 hectares\nof land and development of hydro power of 470 MW capacity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The original master plan was for the completion in 30 years, but in 1977 it was expedited to be completed in 7 years. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The final phase, Moragahakanda, was completed in 2018.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The program encompasses\nseven administrative districts and covers approximately 1\/6 of the island\u2019s\nland mass.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Much\nhas been written praising the Mahaveli Program which opened up thousands of new\nagricultural lands and created volumes of hydro power.  There is no doubt that framers in the dry\nzone were hugely benefitted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mahaveli\ncreated eight major hydropower projects – Bowatenne, Kotmale, Maduruoya,\nPolgolla, Randenigala, Victoria, Rantambe and Moragahakanda. All of these were\nmultimillion dollar mega projects. The effects that they had on the\nenvironment, fauna and flora is unprecedented.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not\nmuch has been written about the negative effects of the Mahaveli Program. This\nshort article attempts to address some of them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hundreds\nand thousands of virgin forests were cleared for the settlement of new\nsettlers. It is estimated that over 256,000 hectares of virgin forest lands\nbecame Mahaveli land. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Large swaths of fertile land went under water and\nthousands of people were forcibly uprooted from their ancestral lands. Many people\nleft their lands with tearful eyes.  Some\nof the lost lands were the best, most fertile and valuable agricultural lands\nof the country (eg. lands in Teldeniya, Kotmale, and Elahara).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thanks to the accelerated Mahaveli\nProgram, the human \u2013 elephant conflict took an adverse upturn.  As more and more downstream settlement\nprojects were implemented, these large mammals had no other alternative but to\nencroach into newly formed human settlements. \nThe massive deforestations directly blocked the ancient elephant\ncorridors. Other wildlife too lost their habitats; they either became extinct\nor endangered. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thousands of humans and\nelephants have died as a result of this fierce battle between two intelligent\nanimal species. The conflict is ongoing; for over 40 years we are grappling\nwith the problem. It seems we do not know the solution!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The damage caused to paddy\nand other crops by the displaced elephants and other animals such as monkeys,\nwild boar, deer\/sambhar and peacocks etc is immeasurable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Veddah communities lost\nland that they had enjoyed from time immemorial. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In some areas, due to the\nbuilding of huge dams, the healthy Mahaveli is \u2018almost dead\u2019. One could notice\nthat the river in Thennekumbura \u2013 Haragama areas now has very little water.\nLarge granite rocks that were previously submerged have become permanently exposed\ndue to the dearth of water resulting from the dams. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The large shark like fish\n(some were capable of growing to over 8 feet in length) that roamed Mahaveli is\nno more; they have disappeared forever. The dams blocked their free flow\nmovement within the river. Also, they destroyed local ecosystems thus the fish\nthat swam upstream to mate became extinct. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

By 1990s hydropower has become\nextremely unpopular worldwide. This is due to the harm it causes to communities\nand ecosystems. The world by then understood that the environmental disturbance\nthe hydropower dams contribute had greatly reduced the world\u2019s endangered\nspecies. But, Mahaveli had done its damage then. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The environmental damage\/destruction the\nMahaveli Program has done is enormous (the strange situation is that in Sri\nLanka we continue to build large and small hydropower stations at great cost to\nthe environment.  The writer states that\nSri Lanka should have stuck to clean<\/strong> coal power stations instead.\nAll developed nations developed from coal power (some later developed nuclear\nenergy). China and India continue to build coal power stations at a breakneck\nspeed, knowing that it is the most reliable and cost effective source of power\ngeneration. They are on a race to become very wealthy. Norochcholai alone\nprovides the country with 300 MW power \u2013 approximately 2\/3 of the power generated\nby the eight Mahaveli hydropower projects combined!).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Major effects of salinity\nhas been reported in some Mahaveli areas (eg system H irrigation area, especially\nin the Kalawewa basin).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is not a secret that the\nMahaveli Program was a source of illicit money making for unscrupulous\npoliticians, their cohorts and government administrators. Some say it is the\nMahaveli Program that introduced mega style corruption in Sri Lanka. Today, the\npractice has become the norm.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\nintention of this article is not to undermine the huge gains that the country has\nsecured from the Mahaveli Program, but only to highlight some of the major negative\neffects.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Chanaka Bandarage The Mahaveli Development Program is the largest multipurpose national development program of Sri Lanka. The program included irrigation development of about 365,000 hectares of land and development of hydro power of 470 MW capacity. The original master plan was for the completion in 30 years, but in 1977 it was expedited to be […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[88],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-107038","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chanaka-bandarage"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107038","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=107038"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107038\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=107038"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=107038"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=107038"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}