diff --git a/CHANGES.txt b/CHANGES.txt
index f6b83cb779d..ad9c1656429 100644
--- a/CHANGES.txt
+++ b/CHANGES.txt
@@ -424,7 +424,9 @@ Release 0.21.0 - Unreleased
                every heartbeat (Karthik Ranganathan via Stack) 
    HBASE-2302  Optimize M-R by bulk excluding regions - less InputSplit-s to
                avoid traffic on region servers when performing M-R on a subset
-               of the table (Kay Kay via Stack)
+               of the table (Kay Kay via Stack) 
+   HBASE-2309  Add apache releases to pom (list of ) repositories
+               (Kay Kay via Stack)
 
   NEW FEATURES
    HBASE-1961  HBase EC2 scripts
diff --git a/pom.xml b/pom.xml
index 2e989ea10eb..d70dd70fbfa 100644
--- a/pom.xml
+++ b/pom.xml
@@ -173,6 +173,17 @@
   </properties>
 
   <repositories>
+    <repository>
+      <id>asf-releases</id>
+      <name>Apache Public Releases</name>
+      <url>https://repository.apache.org/content/repositories/releases/</url>
+      <snapshots>
+        <enabled>true</enabled>
+      </snapshots>
+      <releases>
+        <enabled>true</enabled>
+      </releases>
+    </repository>
     <repository>
       <id>asf-snapshots</id>
       <name>Apache Public Snapshots</name>