Physical Characteristics of Water Resources Development in the Basin

Physical Characteristics of Water Resources Development in the Basin

Irrigation systems. There are seven major and medium reservoirs constructed in the basin area to supply water for irrigated agriculture. About 6,320 hectares are cultivated under these tank systems. In addition, there are about 1,560 small village tanks serving nearly 12,000 hectares. These tanks have been registered in the Department of Agrarian Services. An equal number of small village tanks that are not registered in the government records exist in the basin. These tanks constructed by the farmers are farmer-managed and receive assistance from NGOs for major repair and rehabilitation activities. Figure 4 shows the Deduru Oya DS divisions and the distribution of minor tank systems.

Figure 4. Deduru Oya DS divisions and distribution of minor tank systems.

132 Groundwater extraction (agricultural wells). Extraction of groundwater through agricultural wells

is an expanding water resource use in the basin. Most of the people tapping groundwater are the second- and third-generation members of farmer families without access to land and water in major, medium or minor tank systems. Some farmers cultivating under minor tank systems have wells in their paddy lands used for supplementary irrigation. In the yala seasons some farmers use them to raise other field crops (OFCs). Most of these wells have been constructed by farmers with assistance from the government or foreign-funded rural development projects. They are owned by farmers individually. The spatial variation of agricultural wells in the basin is shown in table 4. Farmers in the dry-zone areas of the basin tend to use them as a supplementary source of irrigation. At present, there are about 2,450 agro-wells in the basin and the number is increasing annually. The Deduru Oya DS divisions and agro-wells are presented in figure 5.

Figure 5. Agricultural wells in the basin.

Lift irrigation schemes. Lift irrigation is another means of extracting surface water for agriculture. There are lift irrigation schemes in the basin serving farmer groups formally recognized by the government. Also there are individual farmers tapping water in the river and its tributaries using water pumps. All these farmers are concentrated in areas below diversion points of the major irrigation schemes of the river. Farmers resort to lift irrigation for cultivation, as they have no access to water in the tank system. However, their operations are limited to periods when there is a base flow in the river. Farmers tapping water through lift irrigation have serious

133 problems at present due to the deepening of the riverbed as a result of excessive sand mining.

The farmers using lift irrigation in downstream areas have problems of water quality due to intrusion of seawater. Details of these pumps and their spatial distribution in the basin are shown in both table 1 and figure 6.

Figure 6. Map of Deduru Oya indicating lift irrigation systems.

Domestic water (drinking)-supply schemes in the basin. Those with access to pipe-borne water supply amount only to 5 percent of the population in the basin. Drinking water is a serious problem for a third of the basin population, in the middle part of the basin area falling within the dry zone. This is mainly due to the shortage of groundwater and its poor quality in this part of the basin. Although there is a tributary of the Deduru Oya in this area, it cannot be used for augmenting drinking water supply schemes due to pollution. This tributary running through the Kurunegala town, the main city of the northwestern province, gets polluted due to wastewater and sewage discharge. The tail-end portion of the basin also has problems of drinking water due to salinity in the resources of groundwater and surface water. Only about

37 pipe-borne water supply schemes and 1,199 tube wells are available for the whole basin to provide drinking water to the communities in the basin area. There are no separate schemes or infrastructure to supply water for industries, livestock and other uses. The agricultural wells and other drinking water sources are used for these purposes.

134 Land development (existing land-use pattern).

A large part of the basin consists of coconut plantations, representing about 36 percent of the total land area in the basin. The second largest land-use category is paddy lands, covering 17 percent of the land area in the basin. Nearly 14 percent of lands are home gardens, concentrated mainly in rural areas.