Land Consolidation Engineering Bureau, Ministry of the Interior, R.O.CLand Consolidation Engineering Bureau, Ministry of the Interior, R.O.C

The early rural land consolidation zone rural waterworks and road improvement projects are formally regarded as the second rural land consolidation phase. The target of this phase was to improve irrigation and drainage canals and roads that hadbeen completed before 1971. Another objective is to widen the agricultural roads to 4 meters to allow passage of large agricultural machinery and facilitate modernized agricultural management models. Hence, subsidies would not be provided to improved agricultural roads that were not widened to 4 meters since these roads would not satisfy the above objectives to begin with.

Recently, the government has been promoting ecological conservation and environmental protection policies. Hence, when this Bureau designed the agricultural roads and waterways, 4 M x 0.3 M water infiltration structures (or PVC infiltration holes) were specifically built at the bottom of the drainage canal and branches. The main functions are to allow replenishment of underground aquifers and improve soil biological activity to achieve the goal of ecological conservation.

A seepage facility (4 meters long, 0.3 wide, and 2 meters in between) shall be placed at the bottom of drainage canal every 6 meters. Gravel filters would be laid within. If the side wall of the drainage canal is more than 1 meter high, PVC pipes (15 cm in diameter and 20 cm long) would be placed every 1 meter instead to avoid affecting structural stability.

Work at this stage is preliminary work for the engineering design stage, and includes gathering geological (soil, existing flora, buildings and transport infrastructure) and basic hydrological information about the areas to be improved. A local information session will be held to ensure the public is kept fully informed about the project and that public demands are met, followed by a committee examination; once the plans pass, work will be carried out to raise the standards of the local farming environment by improving agriculturalroads, waterwaysupply and drainage methods and landscaping as detailed in the plan.

The agricultural road design for the early agricultural land consolidation zone agricultural waterway improvement and upgrading works carried out by this Bureau, are in accordance with theCalifornia bearing ratio (CBR) test results' stipulated constituentand asphalt coagulant laying thicknesses for various improvement and upgrading zones. Most commonly found design values are graded gravel of 20 cm, with main agricultural road improvements or widimprovements to existing asphalt coagulanttypicallyadd5 cm of asphalt coagulant.

If there are items on the ground (for example, water pump rooms, enclosing walls, etc.) belonging to members of the public within the area of early farmland consolidation zones where agricultural waterways upgrading and improvement works are to be carried out (where ownership of land is public), the organizing authority and local government office are tasked with persuading the people to carry out demolition themselves and with obtaining a non-compensation letter of consent.

The Bureau is assisting the Land Administration Bureau of Taichung City Government in implementing the Taichung City's Taichung Sugar zone expropriation engineering project management. Work on this project (landscape tender) is tentatively scheduled to begin on June 28, 2016.

Agricultural waterway upgrading and improvement projects in early farmland consolidation zones are multi-year projects. Taking 2015 as an example, the planning stage was from June, 2015 to January, 2016, while the design stage was from February, 2016 until the end of April, 2016, and the construction stage is from approximately July, 2016 (after contracting) untilthecompletion and acceptance at the end of April, 2017 (to be decided depending on each work area).

As the areas of early farmland consolidation were larger, funding for upgrading andimprovement planning has now been reconsidered, so that they need to be carried out according to date and place. Taking the agricultural waterways upgrading and improvement works of Yunlin County's Beigang (4) as an example, Beigang is the area name of the consolidation area, and '4' represents the early farmland consolidation area's period of upgrading and improvement engineering. Periods 1 to 3 were carried out and completed in 1988, 1999, and 2004, respectively.

During agricultural waterways upgrading and improvement engineering planning for early farmland consolidation areas, historical rainfall and other suchlike hydrological data, and the maximum rainfall in one day in 10 years is collected and then analyzed. The existing drainage system in the area to be improved is also investigated, calculating its drainage area and drainage amount, to work out the unit catchment area drainage flow. Then the Manning formula is used to carry out water calculation to determine the new drainage ditch section size and height of water level (d), and the design of the drainage ditch wall height should be higher than the water level by 1/3d or 20 cm.