Looking like a lake once again

The Kandy Lake built by the last King of Kandy Sri Wickrama Rajasinghe is one of the city's most important landmarks and much has been written about its maintenance or lack of it. Recently, the target of a major rehabilitation project, the lake is now looking clean and the welcome news is that there are many plans to keep it this way.

The Regional Director Irrigation, Kandy Range, Chandra Godaliyadde said the rehabilitation of the Kandy Lake had been a challenging task, even though the Irrigation Department has had the experience of rehabilitating many major tanks in the country.

Mrs. Godaliyadde said their main task was initially to assess the situation of the Kandy Lake. The lake was under the administration of the Kandy Municipal Council until 1996. The then minister through a special Cabinet paper had given the responsibility of managing the lake to the Irrigation Department so that major improvements and maintenance work could be attended to.

Since 1997, the Irrigation Department has been maintaining the Lake. The Department had been given Rs. 2.5 million since then and from last year Rs. 3 million annually for maintenance work on the embankment, pavement and clearing of all the debris in the lake. The department was desilting the twenty odd small silt traps and major silt traps – Ratubokkuwa (located towards Ampitiya end),at Saranankara, Mahamaya and also at Hillwood.

She added that the 'Walakul Bemma' (the Kandy architectural wall) and the pavements around the lake were also maintained with this money.

At one time, the lake was green and smelly, and to tackle this problem of waste being sent into the lake, the department, on the advice of the then Mayor, formed a committee so that four areas, lake water, structures, lake bed and catchment area could be identified for attention.

The first was that immediate steps had to be taken to remove the algae growth in the water and find a permanent solution to this ever-increasing problem. The next, she said, was that measures had to be taken for the embankment, 'Walakul Bemma' and other structures that needed major repairs. A report was compiled on this.

One of the committee members, the National Water Supply and Drainage Board representatives conducted a survey and are in the process of compiling it to be submitted to the donors to establish a sewerage plant for Kandy City including the lake area, she added.

The onus of helping to find a land for this and other facilities was also undertaken by the Department. Mrs. Godaliyadde said that the Irrigation Department concentrated on the structural work of the lake and how best this could be done to have a beautiful lake within this ancient city of Kandy. To this end the then Minister moved the Government to allocate funds for embankment improvement work using the ' Gabion Walls ' (walls around the lake constructed with caged rock stone) and for pavement repair, which has been completed.

Mrs. Godaliyadde emphasized that the lake should be dredged every 10 to 15 years due to more buildings coming up around it and therefore more and more silt coming into the lake. Kandy lake has no low level sluice to take out the silt.

The Irrigation Department helped the Kandy Municipal Council in a dredging operation in 1987/88 and twice before in the 60's, and 70's too.

Another dredging operation, embankment work and additional silt traps, were required and a further Rs. 65 million was allocated. Work commenced at the end of 2005 and was completed by the end of May 2006.

Currently there is work being done on the gabion walls and the slit traps, said Mrs. Godaliyadde. She said that the money saved over this project would be used to do the pavements with interlocking slabs as agreed upon at the meeting headed by the Governor of the Central Province.