Poisonous waters

Over the past three years, the University of South Kazakhstan University of Mukhtar Auezov (YUKGU) conducted water quality studies in the largest river Central Asia - Syrdarya. For this, NATO in 2011 allocated a grant in the amount of 600 thousand euros. The other day, environmentalists unveiled the first results of their work, which turned out to be very depressing: the river is recognized as poisoned, and its water is not suitable even for watering fields.

On Syrdarya, three reservoirs: Cayrakkum in Tajikistan, Shardarinskoye and Koksarai in Kazakhstan. On the banks of the river are the city of Khujand, Syrdarya, Bekabad, Shardar, Kyzylorda, Baikonur, KazALINSK.

Scientists who studied samples from the Shardarinsky reservoir located on the territory of the South Kazakhstan region at the border with Uzbekistan, to the Aral Sea (Northern Aral, as the reservoir preserved in the Kazakh part of the old Aral Sea), found a high concentration of such heavy metals in water as mercury , lead, zinc, copper, chrome, nickel, molybdenum.

"Syrdarya's water is not recommended to be used both for agricultural needs and for the maintenance of fisheries," says Professor Yukga Uylesbek Thelekov now. In his opinion, the highest concentration of poisonous substances is observed in the waters of the Syrdarya, bordering Uzbekistan. At the same time, it is not clear what kind of enterprise and from which country is most polluting the river (Syrdarya proceeds through the territory of Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan). But even if it is possible to establish the main pollutant and proceed to cleaning, the water will become suitable for use in a minimum decade after cleaning.

Opening Yukga You won't call a sensation. Back in 2009, Deputy General Director of the Independent Kazakhstan Agency Applied Ecology, Malik Bulibaev, said that the water of Syrdarya could not be used as drinking, nor for irrigation of fields.

According to the ecologist, rice, grown in the Kyzylorda region of Kazakhstan, which is watering with water from Syrdarya, is not suitable for food, because it can cause oncological diseases. In particular, Burlibaev stated, in the Kyzylorda region the highest level of cancer of the digestive organs and congenital abnormalities in children, and 90 percent cases in maternal milk have pesticides.

Worsening water quality in Syrdarya and the degradation of the river itself have a long history. In the Soviet years, active discharges in the reservoirs and watercourses of the basin of the Syr Darya are not either at all non-peeled wastewater industrial enterprises, objects of the communal sector and agriculture. In the basin of Syr Darya 44 percent of irrigated land accounted for the Fergana Valley, 24 percent - on the average course (hungry steppe), 13 percent - for the Chirchik-Ahangaran irrigation district, about 4 percent - on the upper course (Karadarya and Naryna pools) and about 15 percent - on the lower course and the Aryc-Turkestan irrigation area.

Moreover, with an increase in water intake, which was particularly active in the period from the 1950s to the 1980s, the collector-drainage stock, discharged from numerous reservoirs. This led to an increase in water mineralization, extinct many types of river organisms.

As the water of the river is used now, to track extremely difficult - the authorities of the Central Asian republics in matters of water use behave with each other extremely wary. However, according to the Tajik Scientist-Economist Abduvakhhob Wahhobov, studying Syrdarya within the Sogd region of Tajikistan, more than 75 percent of water resources involved in agriculture, where about 153 thousand cubic meters of return collector-drainage waters are formed, which are secondary to watering crops. And then reset back to the river. All this leads not only to water pollution, but also to the shading of the river, pollution of its shores by various types of waste, the spread of various types of infectious diseases - such as malaria, abdominal typhoid, Botkin's disease and gastrointestinal disease.

In turn, Uzbek experts studying the water of the river for 441 kilometers (before it hits the territory of Tajikistan and returns to Uzbekistan again), it is stated that after the sign in the River the largest in the Fergana Valley of the Severobagdad collector, water mineralization increases from 400 to 1700 mg / l, and 20 kilometers decreases to 1000-1200 mg / l. With such mineralization, the river flows into the Shardarin reservoir in Kazakhstan.

Simultaneously with mineralization, the content of petroleum products increases due to the discharge of the wastewater of the Fergana refineries. Contamination of Syrdarya Nitrogen nitrite and phenol remains constant at the level of extremely permissible concentration, and pollution with copper and chlororganic pesticides decreases, approved in Uzbekistan. In Tashkent, each enterprise is issued permission to the maximum allowable discharge of wastewater (PDS). Since 1992, a fee for exceeding the PDS has been introduced, and from January 1, 2000, for discharges and within the normal range.

By the way, it was Uzbekistan after the collapse of the USSR initiated the creation of a unified management system and the protection of water resources of the Aral Sea basin. For this purpose, an interstate coordination water commission was formed, which was transferred to the water management of the Aral Sea basin, including the Amudarya and Syrdarya rivers, as well as returnable water. But in practice, as it turns out, no joint structures can cope with the ongoing degradation of the river, which today is the only source of water to fill the remains of the former Aral.