National water policy was set up by the Water Resources Council & Secretariat of the Government of Sri Lanka in April 2000. Its basic premise was that water was a resource that belonged to the government and that the government has the right to administrate its use for the purpose of selling or leasing. There were another eight major points.

A copy of the document was obtained even though the government of Sri Lanka did not wish to have its contents known to the masses. The environmentalists publicized some of the contests of the document via the press. The Green Movement managed to move the document from the "hidden" domain to the public domain. The GM formed a body called the " alliance for the protection of free water". This included a large number of NGOs as well as Trade Unions and the communities of Eppawela and those affected by the Highways policy of Sri Lanka. The GM constantly voiced its descent on the actions of the International Water Management Institute (IWMI) who were behind the formulation of this policy. Therefore IWMI set up a meeting to indicate that they were not behind this move of the government. This was not accepted by the NGOs since the setting up of IMI included articles that allowed it to set pricing models for the sale of water.

Due to the agitation of GM a sinhala copy of the Water Policy document was printed but it did was couched in such terms as to mislead the masses and was not an exact translation of the English document. As the agitation campaign continued and grew, the factors in the document started to change as well from version to version in order to further convolute and confuse people. To date there are around 10 documents that came out of the agitation campaign. In each, they attempted to hide the selling of water behind more and more confusing and dubious "administration" policies and a proper document which preserves the resource and gives it free to those who live in this country has not been prepared yet.

During this time the ADB handed over funds to the Government of Sri Lanka to build a balloon dam close to the Ambatale dam on the Kalani River. Quite apart from the danger to the ambatale dam the funding also included the finance required to set up a water privatization authority and other administrative infrastructure. The GM and other NGOs constantly protested the invasive and destructive plans of the international finance bodies and their governmental and organizational henchmen.

The vested interests renew their efforts - this time under the guise of revamping the country after the Tsunamis. The battle continues. They won't stop trying to hurt our nation and we won't stop making it impossible for them to do so.