Most of the capital and operation & maintenance costs for irrigation and drainage system arefi nanced by the Egyptian government through the Ministry of Water Resources and Irrigation(MWRI). Currently, there is an urgent need to remodel some of the fi nancial models anddevelop new cost recovery ideas for the maintenance of the irrigation and drainage systems.Through this paper, some daring ideas are presented, which potentially could contribute inmitigating the economic challenges of the water sector of Egypt.MWRI conducts a yearly maintenance program for irrigation and drainage systems to properlyutilize the allocated amount of water and improve the hydraulic performance and conveyanceeffi ciency of the system. This requires remodeling and dredging of both irrigation and drainagechannels. The disposal of the dredged material is a burden for MWRI because of cost andallocation for landfi ll area. At the same time, there is a shortage of fi lling material in manyprojects like improvement irrigation project and bank stability projects. The fi rst idea is tomake use of the dredged material, which could be a valuable resource if recycled to meetthe demand of fi lling material in some projects. This will reduce the cost of the maintenanceprogram for irrigation and drainage systems. Discharge of industrial and domestic effl uent,which includes high suspended matter, into surface drains would cause high sedimentationrate and therefore, requires remodeling of the drain cross section more frequently thanplanned. Consequently, the second idea is to enforce monthly fees as part of the licensepermission for any effl uents discharging into the surface drain (Polluter Pay Principle). Thefees will be used to improve the drain system hydraulic performance and improve the waterfront of the drain and thus improving catchment landscape.
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