search.noResults

search.searching

note.createNoteMessage

search.noResults

search.searching

orderForm.title

orderForm.productCode
orderForm.description
orderForm.quantity
orderForm.itemPrice
orderForm.price
orderForm.totalPrice
orderForm.deliveryDetails.billingAddress
orderForm.deliveryDetails.deliveryAddress
orderForm.noItems
International trends Irrigation reform in Moldova


Long-term plan to rebuild irrigation systems and put management in the hands of water users. By Gary Merkley


T


he Republic of Moldova is a small, land-locked Eastern European country situated between Romania and Ukraine. The country has a rich


agricultural history, but most of the agricultural irrigation systems fell into disrepair in the years following the collapse of the Soviet Union.


By the mid 1980s there were over 70 state-built and state-managed irrigation systems, almost all of which pumped water from either the Prut or Nistru Rivers along the western and eastern borders, respectively. Pumping is necessary to lift water to the fields due to the undulating topography of most of the country and the low longitudinal bed slope of the rivers. The energy required to pump the water represents the major operational cost for irrigation. With the hilly topography, almost all irrigation is by pressurized methods, with some microirrigation but mostly sprinkler irrigation. Several types of sprinkler irrigation have traditionally been used in Moldova, and currently there is an emphasis on traveler systems.


Tour of a new


irrigation system pump station in Criuleni, Moldova


The Transition to High Value Agriculture Project under the Millennium Challenge Corporation’s compact program in the Republic of Moldova was designed to redesign and rebuild selected irrigation systems and turn over its management to water users’ associations (known as WUAs) whose membership included


local farmers. By economic standards, some of the irrigation systems had such a high pumping lift that continued operation could not be justified, and those were among the systems that were excluded from the project. Of the remaining systems, 11 were selected.


From 2010 to 2015, Euroconsult Mott-MacDonald implemented the Irrigation Sector Reform Activity, which was one of four components to the Transition to High Value Agriculture Project. The Irrigation Sector Reform Activity included two subactivities: Irrigation Management Transfer and River Basin Management. Through the Irrigation Management Transfer subactivity, the project established and legally registered 11 irrigation WUAs, providing participatory organizational development and institutional strengthening services through capacity building and more than 40 different training topics. The associations were each associated with a “central irrigation system,” representing a total area of 15,000 hectares of farmland. The central irrigation systems were formerly managed by the federal government, but under this project the management of 11 of the systems was transferred to the respective WUAs for a 30-year period. This approach followed international best practices in irrigation water management.


The River Basin Management subactivity consisted of a series of major tasks designed, in part, to support the sustainable operation of the newly rehabilitated irrigation systems and their WUAs. This included legislative reform, water resources monitoring, rating-curve development, and the establishment of a water resources decision-support system. The legislative reform involved the drafting of a new water law, support for the official approval process, and the development of four regulations for the implementation of the new law. Three common platforms were developed, including an internet- based “one-stop shop” for water-use authorizations and two relational databases. Eight new real-time water monitoring stations were installed at key locations along the Nistru River and some of its tributaries, and hydrological surveys were undertaken with Moldova’s State Hydrometeorological Service to develop new rating curves, which established a


32 Irrigation TODAY | April 2018 il 2018


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40