Dynamic Conservation and Management of Aflaj: Falaj Tanuf as a pilot study

Traditionally Aflaj were autonomous, successful and profitable common resource pool groundwater (GW) management systems. The key drivers of success from an economic point of view were (1) Falaj infrastructure is managed by an elected skillful committee composed of a local community members, (2) returns from water markets were enough to cover the costs of operation and maintenance of the Falaj and (3) the whole community contributed to the Falaj maintenance as the priority for water allocation was the domestic uses. Currently Aflaj are facing several challenges due to the changes in the economic and social environment. Farms' size is becoming too small with insufficient productivity to attract young people who are more gravitated to the jobs outside the rural areas; an aging farmers? population is a consequence of that. The government intervention of bringing piped water derived from desalination plants and tube wells for domestic uses by the rural communities did affect negatively the community?s commitment to the Falaj maintenance. The use intensity of the Falaj also declined in winte. As a consequence, a large part of the Falaj water flow during winter period is unused and discharged downstream of the cropped area without any beneficial use for Tanuf Community. The current proposal aims to: (1) increase the value and quantity of the water leased in the Falaj by supporting farmers to get better organized and opening up the market to the non-agricultural sector to increase the returns from water sales. Falaj Tanuf in the interior Governorate is selected for this study as a representative example. A water bottling company is exploiting the same aquifer. Our hydro-economic hypothesis and proposed water management scheme is to allow part of the Falaj water to be conveyed and sold to the water bottling company as the allowed aquifer?s abstraction rate is limited. The village and company will make a conjunctive surface-GW symbiosis of smartly and dynamically (seasonally) water shareholders-users. The second purpose of this project (2) is to explore both technical and hydrological feasibilities of regulating the flow rate into Falaj at the mother well in order to reduce wasting of water during winter. The hydraulic control is by installing a remote control gate on the screen section of the Falaj mother well to regulate the inflow of GW and detain the ?winter? GW in the aquifer for summer. This smart seasonal control of the cone of depression and seasonal drawdowns will allow a better matching between water supply and demand in the agricultural sector and conserve the water for drought periods in the aquifer. Excess volumes of water are sold/traded to the "Tanuf" water bottling company. This dynamic water strategy will boost profits to the Falaj community by generating income and encourage food production. A hydrological model will be used to study the GW dynamics and the fate of the controlled water in the aquifer. Piezometric heads, 2-D fields of the Darcian velocity, residence time of GW particles in the capture zone of the mother well are crucial to ensure the availability of the water during both drought and high demand periods. Finally, (3) the installation of a water gate on the mother well will allow the abandoning of the night time irrigation which is a very demanding task for farmers? family members with few locals willingly to assume this duty, especially as Areef is aging. The research project will analyse the cumulated statistical information on Falaj flow. Water sensors will be placed in the agricultural fields to determine the optimal Falaj flow per season. Finally a social study will be launched within the farmers? community to evaluate the possibility of a land consolidation program either in the form of land sale or long term land lease contracts to ensure the hydro-economical sustainability of the food production.