Water saving and environment friendly canal operations in high water allowance canals

Abstract

NWFP is a rich province in water resources and therefore irrigation canals have water allowances higher than any other province in Pakistan. If these canals are operated according to existing supply based operation then it would lead to water logging of fertile land and would cause severe water losses as well. To avoid this situation, there is a need to devise such canal operation plans which can prevent these adverse effects of increased irrigation supplies. In this situation, the water should not be let unjustifiably to the irrigators, otherwise they would over-irrigate their lands and will cause waterlogging. This can be tackled by adopting a semi-demand based canal operations approach which has two-tiered benefits of water saving and preventing waterlogging. Crop Based Irrigation Operations (CBIO) is a canal operations strategy which can achieve these objectives, if implemented in true sense. In this paper the development, implementation and benefits of CBIO have been discussed, while implementing it on Machai-Maira irrigation canals.