Threat to the Ancient Maduru Oya Sluice

 

Extract 

From the Sunday Island, March 5, 2000:

The folly of the Eppawala Project proposal

by A. Denis N. Fernando
Fellow National Academy of Sciences Consultant

Mr. Fernando is also the 1998 recipient of the Ananda Coomaraswamy Memorial Medal of the Geological Society of Sri Lanka for his exceptional contribution to the Geology of Sri Lanka. 



"It would be relevant to indicate here that the unique upper sluice of the ancient Maduru Oya Dam, which I discovered is also unique in that the bricks of this ancient sluice was bonded together with resinous material making the sluice barrel waterproof, in the manner the ancient Persians built them. When the Canadian contractors threatened to blast this ancient Sluice as it was interfering with their work, I had to plead with Mr. Gamini Dissanayake to save it as it is a unique artefact seen nowhere else in the world. He in turn convinced president J. R. Jayewardene who gave an order to save it. The Govt. spent 15 million rupees and constructed a tunnel to save it. Thus, by their foresight the ancient and unique ancient sluice of Maduru Oya was saved for posterity. Unlike the Maduru Oya Sluice, which is a dead artefact, the Jaya Ganga is a living monument with a unique gradient of six inches to the mile that is yet functioning for the last one and a half millennia serving the peasants and delivering water to the Sacred City of Anuradhapura."

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