Water Resources Board - Sri Lanka

Water Resources Board's mission is to advise the government and the people and make necessary regulations & laws on assessing, conserving, harnessing, developing and frugally utilizing water resources in the country; and to implement the same in close collaboration with the rural society, relevant national and provincial level government institutions, private sector, international organizations and scientific communities here and abroad. The Water Resources Board was established in 1966 under the Act No. 29 of 1964, as an advisory body to the Minister on all matters concerning the control and utilization of the water resources in Sri Lanka.

To ensure that the society today doesn’t pollute the water of future.

It is deemed very necessary to clearly understand the functional domain of the Water Resources Board. As could be seen in following figure that the main domain of the WRB is conducting policy-oriented research pertaining to groundwater. However, there are situations in which the WRB is required to work in collaboration with at least 18 authorities/organizations either in respect of groundwater or surface water as the case may be. The Water Resources Board Act no 29 of 1964 amended in 1999, requires dealing with these authorities/organizations when and where necessary. It is also likely that in future the WRB will be required to work in collaboration with other authorities and organizations either in respect of groundwater or surface water.

Services: 

• Carry out Hydrogeological Surveys to identify Groundwater availability in a given area.
  
• Design and construction of deep tube wells.
  
• Carry out large scale Groundwater Assessment Studies & construction of small scale water supply schemes.
  
• Chemical and bacteriological analysis of water samples.
  
• Environmental impacts assessment pertaining to the Groundwater issues.
  
• Maintaining and furnishing quantitative and qualitative data of shallow / deep Data of specific areas.
  
• Cleaning and rehabilitation of deep tube wells and hand pumps installation.
  
• Design and installation of wind powered Turbine for water pumping.
  
• Carryout short term and long term pumping tests and determination of safe pumping rates of water sources ( Tube wells, Dug wells, Springs etc).
  
• Undertaking in-depth water quality studies.
  
• Presentation of research undertaken in workshops, seminars, symposia etc and publication of research studies.
  
• Preparation of groundwater maps and hydrochemical maps.