Benchmarking of Irrigation Performance in Karatas and Karacal Irrigation Associations

Abstract

This study was carried out to evaluate the system performances of Karatas and Karacal irrigation associations located in Burdur province. Karatas irrigation association was put into operation in 1982 and Karacal irrigation association in 2015 with irrigation areas are 5476 and 4975 ha, respectively. The same public personnel were appointed to both irrigation associations as the Head of the Association in 2018, and as of 2019, both irrigation Associations were gathered under the management of Karatas irrigation association. In this study, the performances of Karatas irrigation, which has an old and predominantly open canal system, and Karacal irrigation systems, which are relatively new and have a pressurized irrigation system, between the years 2015-2019 have been evaluated. In the performance evaluation, a set of indicators under two main headings as water use efficiency, and financial efficiency recommended by the International Technology and Research Program in Irrigation and Drainage (IPTRID) was used. According to the results of the research, when the water use efficiency is examined, especially Annual relative irrigation supply (0.53-0.73 for Karatas; 0.47-0.96 for Karacal) and irrigation ratio (20-72% for Karatas; 36% for Karacal) 55) values were not at the desired levels. In terms of Financial Efficiency, cost recovery ratio (119-401% for Karatas; 144-311 for Karacal) and revenue collection performance (78-442% for Karatas; 10-130 for Karacal) were found to be high. Although this is a new irrigation, Karacal irrigation shows that relatively high maintenance costs are incurred. Total operating maintenance and management (MOM) cost per unit area is US$ 9.60-14.98/ha for Karatas and as 1.32-22.92 US$/ha for Karacal. These values showed that, in general, both irrigations have sufficient financial strength.