| Author | Jayawardena, L. V. P. Nilanthi |
| Call Number | AIT Thesis no.WM-04-08 |
| Subject(s) | Irrigation water--Sri Lanka
|
| Note | A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the
degree of Master of Engineering, School of Engineering and Technology |
| Publisher | Asian Institute of Technology |
| Abstract | Irrigation water management has been implemented about more than one decade to find out the solutions for various deficits in the system. The recent trend of water management is to transfer the control from government agency to the water user organizations. In fact, several studies have concluded that the cost of government budget is diminished, whereas the production cost is increased. However, it is worthwhile to emphasis here that still there are several essential factors to be considered in order to improve it. The Mahaweli Authority of Sri Lanka, the major irrigation scheme in the country looked at the matter and implemented Mahaweli rehabilitation and restructuring project (MRRP) with the formation of farmer group as the farmer organizations, irrigation rehabilitation, irrigation water management transfer and with the bulk water allocation concept (BWAC) for better water management. One of the new concepts is to allocate water in bulk quantity to the farmer organizations in pre-defined plan and agreed with farmer organizations. The objective of study is to assess the performance of implemented new concept of bulk water allocation in the MRRP project at the system H. The method used to assess the performance is considering five level of the system such as macro level, main canal level, system level, block level and distributary canal level. In the main canal level the water delivery and agricultural performance were assessed while the socio economic performance was assessed in distributary canal level. The management changes brought by bulk water allocation concept were discussed in the block level. Water delivery performances were analyzed in terms of adequacy, dependability, equity and water delivery performance ratio (WDPR). Agricultural performances were assessed mainly using Cropping intensity, crop diversification pattern and the water use per unit cost. Assessment was based on primary and secondary data, collected from the field. According to the findings from the BWAC, there were no considerable impact on macro level water management system due to bottleneck, arise from insufficient reservoir capacity. The WDPR shows that the target achievement was less than the intended and varied season to season. Moreover, it is dependent on irrigation interval. Further, water use per unit area is reducing and cropping intensity is showing increment with crop diversification for middle water required crops but not effect to the farmers income. Final conclusion can be drawn as this concept brought to the system quiet and peaceful sharing of available water in that particular season. In addition to that, it reduced water wastages in different level of water delivery system. But this concept did not contribute to the major problem prevailing in the system due lack of water in the dry seasons. |
| Year | 2005 |
| Type | Thesis |
| School | School of Engineering and Technology (SET) |
| Department | Department of Civil and Infrastucture Engineering (DCIE) |
| Academic Program/FoS | Water Engineering and Management (WM) |
| Chairperson(s) | Tawatchai Tingsanchali |
| Examination Committee(s) | Babel, Mukand S.;Gupta, Ashim Das;Clemente, Roberto S.;Molle, Francois |
| Scholarship Donor(s) | Government of the Netherlands |
| Degree | Thesis (M.Eng.) - Asian Institute of Technology, 2005 |