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Management of Agricultural Drainage Pollution Considering Regional Cooperation

by T. C. Lyons, Univ of California, Davis, United States,
M. E. Grismer, Univ of California, Davis, United States,



Document Type: Proceeding Paper

Part of: Irrigation and Drainage: Saving a Threatened Resource?In Search of Solutions

Abstract:

Increasing awareness of toxic substance discharge from agriculture in the San Joaquin Valley of California has resulted in discharge limits on individual constituents in agricultural drainage. Now, just as with industrial point source discharges, agriculture must adapt its management practices to achieve society's required discharge limits. Agriculture differs, however, from industrial activities because the discharge associated with individual production units is not well defined. Thus far, only discharges at the regional, or water district scale, can be realistically identified. From this reason, this paper focuses on identifying management strategies for groups of water users and managers of water districts. The overall goal of this paper is to identify the components of a planning tool (optimization model) which could be used to search out an optimal combination (Pareto optimum) of field level to regional scale management alternatives that reduce the discharge of various constituents from a regional group of water districts. This involves identifying the appropriate physical constraints (e.g., hydrologic components of the system), planning or institutional constraints (e.g., discharge quantities and constituents concentrations), and direct or surrogate objective functions, as well as the possible spectrum of management alternatives and their cost functions.

Subject Headings: Water discharge | Agricultural wastes | Urban and regional development | Water management | Optimization models | Water pollution | Drainage | California | United States

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