The research of water utilization and management in Minqin County

The Minqin County is located between the Tenggeli dessert and the Badanjilin dessert. This county has a dry climate, a ineffectiveness in utilizing water resource, and a lack of reasonable transference mechanism for water rights. In this paper, we present our investigation on the current situation of the water resource in this county, and discuss how to use and manage the water resource. As for the water resource, several major problems exist in this County: the inaccurate macro-control, the groundwater over-extraction, the unreasonable supervisor mode as well as industrial structure, and the limited leverage effect resulted from the improper pricing strategy. To solve these problems, we suggest taking water-saving irrigation, improving the utilization efficiency in water resource, expanding non-government water-utilization associations, controlling agricultural water consumption, raising urban water consumption fee, and implementing government subsidy. How to save on water at the source, how to control water consumption, and how to enhance the availability of water resource, can contribute to the management and utilization of water resource in other dry and semiarid areas.