Water Resources Management - Practices of Irrigation and On-farm Water Management - page 168

For almost all trans-boundary rivers, potentials of basin-wise arrangements is
ignored as the riparian countries limit their planning and management consider-
ations from a narrow nationalistic view. This attitude is also prevalent as a river
flows from one state/province to another, even, within one country. However, reso-
lution of interstate/interprovince disputes in India, United States, and Australia offer
examples to be followed to overcome such stumbling blocks. There are many good
examples where trans-boundary water disputes have been resolved. Involvement of
a third party may facilitate resolution of such disputes, if it is between two unequal
parties. Israel, Jordan, and Palestine have resolved their dispute over common water,
despite all odds.
Reducing Quality Degradation
Degradation of quality to the point where water can no longer be used for its
intended purpose or is no longer suitable for beneficial use in general is a form
of water loss. Such losses occur when fresh water is polluted or when fresh water is
discharged into salt water or seeps down to saline aquifers from where it no longer
can be separately recovered. Where water is scarce, and water conservation is a
necessity, such losses should be minimized. This indirectly increases the available
source.
Cloud Seeding
Cloud seeding is a technique for artificial rainfall. Depending on local conditions,
the economic aspects of cloud seeding can be quiet favorable. Clouds moving over
an area without producing rain is a form of water loss for that area. Orographic
storms are much more productive for seeding than convective storms. In western
United States, seeding of orographic storms is expected to increase precipitation
from those storms by 10-15% (the percentage increase is higher in dry years than in
wet years). The preferred seeding technique is with ground-generated silver iodide
crystals. Seeding from airplanes is much more expensive. Since only about 5% of
the water in orographic storm clouds falls on the ground as natural precipitation, a
10-15% increase in precipitation due to cloud seeding would still leave plenty of
water in the clouds for areas downwind from the seeded areas.
Network Rehabilitation
Initiation of rehabilitation projects for municipal supply network would save water.
This option would be the easiest to implement and would bring overwhelming social
acceptance. Similarly, reducing conveyance loss in irrigation systems provides a
large savings and hence an increase in supply at the user point.
Reallocation Through Volumetric Constraints
The process of reallocating water from agriculture to cover deficits in household
and industrial uses, or lower value crops to higher value crops may be an option to
manage the scarce water resource.