Tiraspol, 13 June. /Novosti Pridnestrovya/. Russia has begun to allocate funds for the development of our country's land improvement system, the head of the land improvement department of the agricultural ministry, Viktor Zabutyrin, said on Radio 1.
«This year we have a really efficient land-improvement programme in Pridnestrovie. Why really efficient? Because the investments Russia has promised to us has already begun to arrive in the republic," he said.
Construction documents have been drafted since November 2016 under a contract signed between Pridnestrovian Irrigation Systems and Russia's Irrigation and Water Supply Research Institute Raduga. Most recently, in May, documents were completed to fully renovate the main irrigation pump station in the Rybnitsa district.
«This floating pump station will be completely replaced with the latest equipment specially designed for our region. The unit operation method has been chosen. Each unit will provide from 2,000 to 4,000 cubic metres of water per hour. Today we irrigate in Rybnitsa about 500 hectares, and by 2021 we plan to irrigate 5,000 hectares. The station will be put into operation this year," said Viktor Zabutyrin.
In addition to restoring the elements of the irrigation system, special maintenance equipment will be supplied. It was installed in 1992 and has not been changed since then.
The total cost of the project is 8.9 billion Russian roubles. The money will be allocated in stages — the first 2 billion roubles will come this and next year, the rest until 2021. These funds will be used to restore the most important sections of the land improvement system and restore, if not all, half of the previously irrigated lands.
«In the 1990s we irrigated nearly 120,000 hectares In 2014, when we conducted an inventory of irrigated lands, we found that 67,000 hectares are ready to be irrigated with only 10,000 actually irrigated. Today we plan to restore the irrigation of all 67,000 hectares. This is very expensive today. Suffice it to say that the laying of even a 1-metre-long pipeline costs over $500; pumping equipment is also very expensive," explained Zabutyrin.
