FIELD VISIT-KALUGANGA

The Kaluganga development project in the central province of Sri Lanka is a multipurpose water resources development scheme. The primary purpose of this project is to increase existing water supplies of drought-prone irrigation areas.

A field visit to Kaluganga was organized by the Civil Engineering society of University of Moratuwa on 14^th July ,2018.   We were guided by Dr.P.K.C.De Silva to get maximum benefits from this project. Thirty five students from level 2 and 4 participated in this visit. We left university around 4.30 a.m. for the project which is situated in Pallegama, Matale.

Initially, we had an introductory lecture done by Eng. G.H.L.Kumarasiri. He said that the Kaluganga project commenced on 2014/04/02 and it was budgeted to cost Rs.13 Billion. The contractor for the project is Sinohydro Corporation Ltd. The main purpose of the project is to transfer 100 Million cubic meters of water annually to MoragahaKanda reservoir to fulfill downstream demand.

Design period of Kaluganga project is 100 years. We were able to visit some of the ongoing project structures such as main dam, spillway, diversion tunnel, canal and saddle dam. Engineers who were working in the project explained us about the structure and what else will go down next.

We were not able to get access to moragahakanda, so we visited the view point and observed the dam and reservoir.

The field visit was really beneficial since we got experience in irrigation and water supply etc. It was very useful for us to gain information about the project from the engineers who were lively involved in it.