Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
between the compulsory withdrawals from the reservoir for the population
or for the minimum flow (whichever is the highest) and the releasing
demands of that activity. Agriculture only counts on the water left to it by
urban requirements and the security stock in the reservoir, with the
remaining amount it needs in order to meet its requirements constituting its
deficit. As can be noted, the fall in precipitation takes the form of a lower
quantity of water stored in the reservoir, a situation that remains throughout
the year. Net demand shows the volume of water withdrawn from each
reservoir to meet the requirements.
Given that the hydroelectric value of released water depends on the
head of the reservoir (and, therefore, on the volume of reservoir reserves),
each one of the periods has an associated value of the energy per unit of
water used. This value appears in the bottom row of the table.
In the optimum solution, the hydropower plant will change the
releasing timetable such that it renounces a part of its initial allotment in
the first period. In exchange, hydropower has more water rights in the
second period and a higher profit per unit of released water, due to an
increase in the level of water stored in the reservoir. In this way,
agriculture counts on a larger availability of resources during the irrigation
season, which is equivalent to the drought having a lower impact on profits
and loss account. The allocation of resources in the optimum solution is
presented in Figure 11.4.
Therefore, if both parties reach an agreement such as that
suggested by the optimum solution, an improvement will be achieved in
the Pareto sense, as compared to the case in which there is no agreement.
This is illustrated in Table 11.2, which presents the increase in profits from
the earlier mentioned change in allotments. Therefore, reallocation of water
is expected to generate gains in this case.
Search WWH ::
Custom Search