Land reclamation is important in the development of agricultural production for unfavorable climatic conditions. This necessitates the improvement of scientific and methodological approaches to the creation and operation of water management and reclamation facilities, including drainage systems, which are adapted to these changes. Approaches to the type and design of drainage systems based on a combination of a modern progressive optimization approach with the traditional water balance method, hydrodynamic and hydraulic methods are presented. Approaches to the systemic optimization of technological and design solutions for the creation and operation of drainage systems have been determined. It seems that the drainage system is a complex natural and technical ecological and economic system. Finding the general optimum in such a system based on the system optimization consists in substantiating local optima for all its main components of heterogeneous elements in the system effect - mode - technology - design in their interconnection. The practical implementation of a complex of predictive-simulation and optimization calculations in projects for new construction, reconstruction and modernization of drainage systems based on the developed scientific, methodological, information and software can be carried out using the appropriate toolkit, which is CAD and modern BIM technologies. The transition to optimization methods will improve the feasibility and overall technical, technological, environmental and economic efficiency of the creation and operation of water management and reclamation facilities in accordance with modern requirements.