Revival: Water Management Organization in the People's Republic of China (1982)

James E. Nickum

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351715409
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Law
• Subtopic: Courts
• Index: Law

Combining a journalist's view of major trials with a political-legal analysis, this text gives a picture of the politics of justice in Russia. Coverage of major court cases ranges from the 1961 trial of the "currency speculators" to the Communist Party trial of 1992.

II Case Studies

NASA LANDSAT image, July 26, 1978 (band 7).

Reading 3
Management of the Meichuan Reservoir Irrigation Project

Edited by the Bureau of Water Conservancy and Electric Power, Huanggang Prefecture, Hubei, and the Water Conservancy Planning Teaching and Research Section, Wuhan Water Conservancy and Electric Power Institute*

Foreword

Meichuan Reservoir is situated on the Meichuan River approximately two kilometers north of the town of Meichuan in Guangji xian, Hubei. The Meichuan River has two main branches, one originating between the Henggang Mountains and Bali Cliff and the other in the southern foothills of the Henggang Mountains. The upper reaches encircle the perilous mountain peaks and ridges. The catchment area above the dam, in a hilly and mountainous region, totals 25 square kilometers.

The reservoir was begun in August 1957 and finished in January 1959. Key projects include the main dam, two auxiliary dams, a spillway, and water transport pipes. The main dam is an earth-fill type with a central clay core; it is 22 meters high and 910 meters long at the crest, with a total dam volume of 1.03 million cubic meters. The auxiliary dams have a total length of 290 meters; the larger is 12.5 meters high and has a volume of 98,000 cubic meters. The spillway is an open broad-top embankment 14 meters wide, with a maximum discharge capacity of 37.3 cubic meters per second [cms]. The pipes are round reinforced concrete with a diameter of 1.55 meters and a maximum discharge of 10 cms. The total capacity of the reservoir is 35 million cubic meters, with a beneficial capacity of 27 million cubic meters. The planned irrigated area is 70,000 mou [4,700 hectares].

Meichuan is a medium-sized reservoir. For the first several years after construction, due to the inadequacy of water sources, inadequate linkage and rounding out of the projects, and improper management, the reservoir only irrigated 30,000 to 40,000 mou of farmland, about 50 percent of the designed area. With a dozen or so years of continuously summing up experiences under the leadership of Party committees at various levels; conscientiously studying Chairman Mao's teachings on the general policy for the development of the national economy, "Take agriculture as the foundation and industry as the leading sector" and "Water conservancy is the lifeline of agriculture"; and thoroughly implementing the water conservancy policy of "Stress small-scale, ancillaries, and the commune sector doing it themselves," with arduous struggle and self-reliance, the revolutionary activism of the personnel of the reservoir and the broad masses of the irrigation district has been thoroughly aroused, and the irrigated area has been expanded continuously. By 1973, the irrigated area had reached 120,000 mou, 71 percent above the planned capacity. The grain yield throughout the district had surpassed the "Program" for four years in a row. In 1971, when there was a 70- to 80-day drought, the district's grain yield was 1,017 jin per mou [7.62 tons per hectare (t./ha.)]. In 1972, with rather little water in the reservoir, there was an 80-day drought, which was followed after the autumn by a continuous rain of 300 millimeters and an attack of insect pests on the late rice. In spite of this, the grain yield still reached 910 jin per mou [6.82 t./ha.].

The Reservoir Management Office has persisted in developing multiple operations while taking water as its main task, making great efforts to promote fish raising in the reservoirs and the ponds. The catch from the reservoir's 2,500 mou fishbreeding area was 107 jin per mou in 1971 and 108 jin per mou in 1972. On the 3,100 mou breeding area of ponds in the irrigation district, the catch averaged 337 jin per mou in 1971 and reached 419 jin per mou in 1973. The total yield of fresh fish from the reservoirs and ponds throughout the district in 1971 and 1972 alone was 2,396,000 jin [1,198 t.]. The personnel of the reservoir, with the precondition of persisting in using water to serve increases in farm output, have done a good job in running reservoir enterprises; they have emphasized fish raising and combined agriculture, forestry, animal husbandry, and fishery. They have attained self-sufficiency with a surplus in grain, cotton, oilseeds, and meat, thereby using the reservoir to support the reservoir in a self-reliant manner.

Chairman Mao teaches us: "Water conservancy is the lifeline of agriculture." The purpose of constructing waterworks is primarily to guarantee an increase in farm output. The Meichuan Reservoir project is not large in scale and its conditions are ordinary, but it has played an extremely large role in increasing farm output. In the past dozen or so years, they [Meichuan] have sought to sum up a set of beneficial experiences in good management and utilization of the project. Important among these are: by correctly and consistently adhering to the Party's "three-main" water conservancy policy and mobilizing the masses and relying on them, they have constructed an irrigation network with the Meichuan Reservoir at its core; by clearly establishing the thinking of serving increases in farm output, they allocate water rationally and use it scientifically; they pay serious attention to combining the control of water with the control of soil and mountains and combining farm water projects with farmland capital construction in order to create farmland capable of stable yields despite drought or flooding; they have developed a diversified economy while persisting in placing emphasis on water; and they have strengthened the Party's leadership and persisted in the mass line to construct, manage, and use the project well.

Heeding Chairman Mao's teaching that "we must conscientiously sum up our experiences," we stress summing up the water management experience of the Meichuan Reservoir Irrigation District. In the process of writing this book, comrades of the Water Conservancy Office of the Hubei Province Bureau of Water Conservancy and Electric Power, the Bureau of Water Conservancy and Electric Power of Guangji xian, Hubei, and the Meichuan Reservoir Management Office helped us examine [the manuscript] and gave us a number of valuable comments. For this we express our heartfelt thanks.

Bureau of Water Conservancy and Electric Power, Huanggang Prefecture, Hubei, and the Water Conservancy Planning Teaching and Research Section, Wuhan Water Conservancy and Electric Power Institute

December 1973

I. Establishing an Irrigation Network

The Meichuan District lies entirely within a hilly and mountainous area. In the north there is the Henggang Mountain Range, with its majestic, uninterrupted row of peaks, bordering on Qichun xian. The eastern border is a low mountain area, including the Ling and Yue mountains, thrusting up among the hills in a line extending from north to south. The western and central portions of the district consist primarily of belts of rolling hills. The cultivated land there is fragmented and only in a long, narrow river valley strip 100-200 meters wide along both banks of the Meichuan River is the land relatively level. The southern border abuts the xian's Siwang qu.

The land throughout the entire district slopes generally from north to south. Aside from the Meichuan and Songyang rivers, there are many small brooks of a mountain-stream nature scattered among the hills and mountain slopes, resulting in a short, rapid flow from the water sources. [Formerly,] whenever there was a heavy rain, the mountain floods would come down in sheets, overflowing the field crops. Whenever it was clear for a number of days, the brooks would dry up and cease flowing.

Before liberation there were no water conservancy works in the district. Irrigation depended in the main on a series of isolated ponds which had been handed down through history and which had a low resistance to drought. A normal grain yield was only about 400 jin per mou [3.0 t./ha.].

Table 1
Meichuan Reservoir Irrigated Area and Output Increases

The construction of the Meichuan Reservoir fundamentally changed the appearance of agricultural production in the irrigation district. Grain output has increased from year to year and has surpassed the "Program" for four years in a row (see Table 1). The area under irrigation has continually expanded from the originally designed 70,000 mou [4,700 ha.] to 120,000 mou [8,000 ha.].

Meichuan Reservoir is of medium scale with a beneficial capacity of only 27 million cubic meters, and in most years the amount of water averages only 16 million cubic meters. How have they [Meichuan] been able to produce such great benefits? One of their important experiences is that while managing and utilizing the Meichuan Reservoir, they have mobilized and relied on the masses to undertake in a big way small-scale farmland water conservancy; step-by-step they have constructed a melons-on-a-vine-style irrigation network of integrated large, medium, and small projects centered around Meichuan Reservoir and based on small reservoirs and ponds.

1. Analyze the Contradictions, Unify Knowledge

Meichuan Reservoir is situated on the upper reaches of the Meichuan River. The Meichuan is a mountain-stream-type river originating in the southern foothills of the Henggang Mountains. The Henggang Mountains are tall and steep, with surfaces composed mostly of wind-eroded sandstone. Before liberation, trees were sparse and the ground cover thin. This, plus uncontrolled tree felling, led to serious soil erosion. In consequence, the main flow in the Meichuan River in normal years was very small, and in years of drought, it was basically dry. The water flowing into the reservoir relies mainly on trapping the rainfall runoff in a catchment area of twenty-five square kilometers within the reservoir district. For many years, the average rainfall in the reservoir district has been 1,290 millimeters, and the average water inflow has been about 16 million cubic meters. The capacity of the reservoir is large relative to the inflow. In the fifteen years since 1958, the reservoir has been full in only two years (1971 and 1973). For four years, at the end of the irrigating season, the water remaining in the reservoir approached, or even fell below, the dead storage level, with water being pumped out of the reservoir for irrigation (see Table 2). Because of this, the masses called it the "empty belly" reservoir which was "not full for two years, and was used until it was dry in one."

The Meichuan Irrigation District has two main canals, the

Table 2
Meichuan Reservoir Water Use in the Past

Year	Water released from reservoir (1,000 cu.m.)	Water remaining at end of irrigating season (1,000 cu.m.)	Days of continuous drought
1959	16,400	3,870
1960	9,910	9,860
1961	17,420	3,000 (equals dead storage)	80
1962	9,530	7,580
1963	14,120	3,000	90
1964	14,510	3,760
1965	7,690	6,550
1966	16,400	500 (dead storage pumped)	100
1967	16,500	4,420
1968	13,100	1,900	90
1969	5,200	22,140
1970	15,310	19,800
1971	22,130	7,870	80
1972	10,470	5,200 (to July 31)	80

East and West canals, which lead water directly from the reservoir for irrigation (see Figure 2). These canals meander from north to south and control the entire Meichuan River valley along with a portion of the hilly district in the west. The East Canal, thirty-one kilometers long, is located basically along the foothills. A large stretch of hilly land above the canal line cannot be irrigated by gravity. The West Canal, thirty kilometers long, circles the mountains in the region of Hongxing Commune, where the highlands must have water lifted to them for irrigation. After the canal reaches Nanchuan Commune, the canal line lies mostly along the top of the ridge and controls the land on both sides through gravity flow. Based on the flow of water into the reservoir, the two canals have a total designed irrigated acreage of 70,000 mou.

After the reservoir was constructed, the problem of irrigation was basically solved within the irrigation district, and grain output grew steadily. But there was still a large amount of hilly and mountain area both within and outside the irrigation district and within the reservoir district which was not irrigated and was vulnerable to drought, so the development of agricultural production over the entire district was very unbalanced. The Meichuan District has a total of 126,000 mou [8,400 ha.] of farmland, of which 106,000 mou [7,100 ha.] is irrigated paddy, entirely planted in double-crop rice. The dry land is mainly used to plant cotton and requires irrigation. Thus, the problem before the Meichuan Reservoir Management Office was to extend the irrigated acreage to solve the problem of irrigation throughout the entire district in order to make the agricultural output of the district exceed the "Program."*

According to many years of experimental data relating to paddy rice irrigation, a double rice crop requires about 500 cubic meters of water per mou per annum. If we drew up a balance based on the average of 16 million cubic meters of water contained by the reservoir, the 106,000 mou of paddy fields in the district could only receive an average of 150 cubic meters of water per mou. It is clear that there is no way to rely on a single Meichuan Reservoir to satisfy the water demands for irrigation throughout the entire district. Evenif we limited ourselves to irrigating the reservoir's 70,000 mou, the use of water would be extremely strained. If the irrigated area were to be further enlarged, not only would the water be insufficient, but at the same time, the limitations of the existing projects and topographical conditions would be felt.

Having made clear the principal contradiction, how does one go about resolving it? The Party branch of the Meichuan Reservoir Management Office, heeding Chairman Mao's teaching that "to investigate is to solve problems," went out both within the irrigation district and beyond to carry out investigation and study. They discovered that in the lower reaches of the West Canal, the masses had constructed on their own a small reservoir which stored 500,000 cubic meters of water, a small project with extensive water sources and high effectiveness. In 1961 there were eighty days of continuous drought, yet this reservoir enabled over 2,000 mou of farmland to yield a bumper harvest. The Party branch was greatly enlightened by this. It showed them that one could use the favorable topography of the hilly and mountainous areas to build small reservoirs, enlarge the water sources, and increase the amount of water stored. Small-scale projects could be built everywhere, were amenable to large mass movements, and could be undertaken by relying on the strength of the commune sector. From this small reservoir, they came to deeply appreciate the boundless vigor of the Party's "three-main" water control policy of "primarily small-scale, primarily ancillary works, and primarily undertaken by the commune sector themselves." In order to resolve the contradiction between the insufficiency of water in the Meichuan Reservoir and the need to enlarge the irrigated area, one had on the one hand to properly manage and use the Meichuan Reservoir and strengthen ancillary works in order daily to improve the project; on the other hand, one had to seriously and thoroughly implement the Party's "three-main" water control policy, go outside of the management office into the commune sector to mobilize the masses, rely on the economic power of the collective, and carry out small -scale farmland water conservancy construct...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• PREFACE
• NOTE TO THE TRANSLATIONS
• INTRODUCTION
• I. INTRODUCTORY READINGS
• II. CASE STUDIES
• III. APPENDIX: REGULATIONS
• ABOUT THE EDITOR