Annotation. Rice irrigation systems (RIS) have a number of features due to the specifics of the culture. A significant part of rice systems is located on waterlogged, flooded and saline soils, most of which are unsuitable for rain-fed agriculture. However, this vast territory in the lower reaches of the Kuban River with favorable climatic and water management conditions has great potential for obtaining high rice yields. Therefore, when developing intensive methods of rice cultivation, it is optimal to include in them the possibility of adjusting technological operations. The paper considers the construction of an assessment of the difficulty of achieving the required quality of the functioning of the RIS. The intensification of rice farming contributes not only to an increase in the productivity of agricultural systems, but also increases the degree of environmental risk. In the zone of influence of the RIS, flooding and waterlogging of territories, secondary salinization, as well as pollution by drainage and discharge effluents of water sources are often noted. Therefore, an urgent scientific task is to analyze and assess the current environmental situation at the existing RIS and develop a methodology for quantitative indicators of the ecological state of the RIS. The quantitative characteristics include indicators of resource costs and expected results of land reclamation. Choosing the optimal combination of various activities that meet the requirements of environmental balance can be the basis of a program that corresponds to optimal production activities. In the article, the effectiveness of individual works is characterized by numerical estimates of the contribution to the achievement of the overall goal of the development of land reclamation and management of the process of crop formation. An approach to finding the optimal solution for the use of resources and working out various options for the organizational mechanism for managing the rice irrigation system is outlined.