“If we can’t manage the dam well, I will resign from the post of president of the association.” announced by Fang Yuejin- President of Water User Association of Jingkou village in the villager session. It was learned that Guiyang county took active actions to promote reform of the property rights system of small irrigation and water conservancy, especially by handling“three innovations”- innovation of investment mechanism, incentive mechanism and organization form. Now, there are 42 members available for the water user association. The total irrigation areas managed by the association are about 136,200mu, covering 37.24% of the total effective irrigation areas of Guiyang county.

There are 591,300mu irrigation areas and 26,604 water conservancy projects available in Guiyang county. 75% of the projects are small irrigation and water conservancy facilities. Due to uncertain management main body, poor management mechanism, lacking of management funds, and other reasons, the regular management and maintenance work for small irrigation and water conservancy projects were failed to be handled well. Guiyang county innovated the investment mechanism to attract more social funds to join in the work. In recent years, the problem of seriously lacking of investment was solved successfully and the reform of property right system of small irrigation and water conservancy projects which was with the main contents of “clear property right, open construction right and flexible operation right” were fully promoted in Guiyang county. It also encouraged to establishing multilevel, multiform, multichannel, and diversified investment system as state-owned, collective, private, union, joint-stock, and etc. All of those helped to solve the poor investment and management problem of small irrigation and water conservancy projects.

Guiyang county innovated the incentive mechanism. It subsidized the registered water user association with the funds of 30,000yuan/association. The pilot work for water user association of farmers was started in Guiyang county in 2006. Till now there are 42 water user associations of farmers available in Guiyang county, covering 28,200 families of 56villages and 26 towns of the county. From 2009, 6million yuan special funds were allocated by Guiyang finance to grant the rewards and subsidies to the maintenance and construction of small water conservancy facilities. The end-canal system which was constructed with the specified standards can be followed the standard of 4yuan/meter maintenance subsides. It was purposely to make sure the end-canal system can be constructed and managed well.

At the meantime, Guiyang county innovated the organization form by well handling “one issue, one discussion”. Followed the principal of “villager governance, one issue-one discussion”, Guiyang county fully respected people’s willing, took the best advantages of the main body function of farmers and gradually established the organization form of voluntary participation, self-organization, government coordination and service. It changed the out of date methods of government control and farmers’ collection of capitals and labors. Over 150kms channels were cleared and 79 pump stations’ labor issues were solved by handling “one issue, one discussion”