DEDURU OYA DAM

 The Deduru Oya is the sixth longest river of Sri Lanka.It measures approximately 142Km in length. It runs across four provinces and five districts. Its catchment area recieves approximately 4313 million cubic meters of rain per year and approximately 27 percent of the water reaches the sea.It has catchment area of 2616 square kilometers ..

                         A canal on the Deduru oya runs near our grandmothers house. People bathe in the canal when the water is low. So we went on that trip to see tha dam. 

The Deduru Oya Dam is an embankment dam built across the Deduru river in kkurunegala district of Sri lanka built in 2004, the primary purpose of the dam is to retain approximately a billion cubic meters of water for irrigation purpose which would otherwise flow out to sea.Site studies of the dam began in 2006 and construction started in 2008.  It was ceremonially completed in 2014 with the presence of the President Mahinda Rajapaksha.

                      The mouth of Deduru oya approximately 80km downstream of the dam. Site studies and design of the dam was gone by engineers from the Ministry of irrigation . The dam which measure approximately 2400m (7,900ft) wide,creates the Deduru oya reservoir which has capacity of 75000000m3.Water from the reservoir is used to irrigate approximately 11000 hectares of farmland ,while also powering a 1.5 megawatt hydroelectric power station ,ooperated by the Ministry of power and energy .

                       In addition to eight sluice gates water from the reservoir via three canals,namely the left canal,central canal,the south canal is trans-basin concrete canals measuring 33km, channeling water from the Deduru oya reservoir to the iginimitiya reservoir at a flow rate of 300cu ft.