The National Water Supply and Drainage Board has begun extracting groundwater to address drinking water shortages in the Batticaloa and Monaragala districts, with about 60 tube wells currently under construction in Monaragala.
NWSDB Chairman Chandana Bandara said steps have also been taken to build tube wells in Batticaloa, NewsFirst reported. It is the first time the board has put a number on the drilling programme during the current dry spell.
Storage has kept falling
Water levels in reservoirs under the Irrigation Department have dropped to 34.7 per cent. The decline is concentrated in the east: Ampara stands at 21.7 per cent, Batticaloa at 25.6 per cent and Trincomalee at 26.8 per cent.
Those three districts have moved down together over the past week. The Daily Mirror reported the same three ranges at 22.0, 25.8 and 27.0 per cent on 26 August, when national storage across 74 major reservoirs stood at 35 per cent. Each has slipped by roughly a quarter to half a percentage point in three days — a slow, steady drawdown rather than a sudden collapse.
Storage in ten major reservoirs is now below 20 per cent: Muruthawela, Morawewa, Kaudulla, Athimale, Weerawila, Veheragala, Unnachchai, Morana, Nagadeepa and Rottikulam. The Irrigation Department said it is releasing water with maximum management efficiency to protect drinking water supplies.
Individual tanks were reported at still lower levels on Friday, with Ethimale at 5 per cent and Morawewa at 9 per cent.
The caseload
The Disaster Management Centre is supplying drinking water to more than 75,000 people across seven districts. The total number of people affected by the dry weather has passed 84,545, across divisional secretariat divisions in Badulla, Polonnaruwa, Hambantota, Ratnapura, Batticaloa and Ampara — a figure unchanged since Friday’s count and up from 81,765 on 21 August.
Monaragala is not among the districts NewsFirst lists as affected in this report, despite being the district where the tube wells are being drilled and, on the government’s own figures a day earlier, the worst-hit district in the country with 35,639 people affected. NewsFirst does not explain the omission.
The drilling marks a shift in approach. The board said in late July that no water restrictions were planned despite the dry weather, relying on managing existing resources; it is now developing new sources instead.
No other verified newsroom had reported the tube well figures at the time of writing.
