Both spill gates of the Ambewela reservoir were opened to eight inches on Tuesday afternoon after heavy rain, releasing 240.88 cusecs of water downstream, Hiru News reported at 5.24 p.m.
The decision followed heavy rain over the Badulla area during the afternoon, according to E.L.M. Udayakumara, Assistant Director of Disaster Management for the Badulla district, who is the only official quoted in the filing.
Where the water goes
The spill discharge runs into the Agra Oya, passing Dayagama, Lindula, Agarapathana and Talawakele before reaching the Upper Kotmale reservoir.
A risk notice issued by the Irrigation Department states that the water level in the Agra Oya may therefore rise, Udayakumara said.
That chain is worth stating plainly for readers, because the warning and the risk sit in different places. The gates are operated on the authority of the Badulla district disaster management office, but every settlement named in the downstream path lies along the Agra Oya on the approach to Upper Kotmale — the stretch through the Nuwara Eliya district’s tea country. A reader in Badulla town is not the audience for this notice; a reader in Lindula or Talawakele is.
The wider weather picture
The release lands in the middle of a week of heavy upcountry and western rain already on this desk’s record. The Meteorology Department had forecast rain exceeding 100 mm at some places in the Western, Sabaragamuwa, North Western and Northern provinces and in the Anuradhapura district within 36 hours, and the National Building Research Organisation issued landslide warnings for five districts on the same day. Two women were killed by lightning at Nambadagaswewa, Anuradhapura.
Badulla’s reservoirs have spilled before this season: in August the district’s tanks were spilling with a downstream warning issued on the same pattern.
Not reported
The filing does not give the reservoir’s capacity or current storage, the rainfall figure recorded over the catchment, or how long the gates are expected to stay open. It does not say whether any households have been advised to move, whether roads along the Agra Oya are affected, or what level the Upper Kotmale reservoir is holding before the inflow arrives.
On sourcing. This desk could not find a second verified newsroom carrying the Ambewela release. A domain-restricted search returned only earlier, unrelated reservoir-spill filings from August and September — a recurring headline family on which near-identical reports appear throughout each monsoon — together with coverage on sites outside this desk’s verified list. The single Hiru filing is therefore reported on its own, with its one named official attributed.
Sources: Hiru News (Sinhala).
