Mahaweli River (මහවැලි ගඟ)
Mahaweli Ganga,
(Sinhalese: “Great Sandy River”), river, central and eastern Sri
Lanka. At 208 mi (335 km) in length, it is Sri
Lanka’s longest river. It rises on the Hatton Plateau on the western side of
the island’s hill country, flows north through a tea- and rubber-growing
region, and turns east near Kandy; it then turns north across the lowlands,
receives its principal tributary, the Amban Ganga, and flows past Polonnaruwa
to its mouth on Koddiyar Bay, 7 mi south of Trincomalee.
With its headwaters in Sri Lanka’s wet zone,
the Mahaweli Ganga flows throughout the year, providing water for agriculture
in the eastern dry zone. In the early 1970s a vast development project to
increase the river’s usefulness for irrigation and generation of electricity
was under way, under the auspices of the World
Bank. It is scheduled for completion by about 1990.
The real
creation of Mahaweli ganga starts at Polwathura(at Mahawila area), a remote
village of Nuwara-Eliya District in bank Nawalapitiya of Kandy District
by further joining of Hatton oya and Kotmale oya.The river reaches
the Bay of Bengal on the southwestern side of Trincomalee Bay.
The bay includes the first of a number submarine canyons, making Trincomalee one
of the finest deep-sea harbors in the world.
As part of
Mahaweli Development programme the river and its tributaries are dammed at
several locations to allow irrigation in the dry zone, with almost 1,000 km2
(386 sq mi) of land irrigated. Production of hydroelectricity from six dams of
the Mahaweli system supplies more than 40% of Sri Lanka's electricity needs.
One of the many sources of the river is the Kotmale Oya.
There is a
misconception in Sri Lanka that the Mahaweli starts in the Sri Pada mountain.
The Mahaweli gets its source waters from Horton Plains in Kirigalpoththa and
the Thotupola mountain range.
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