Grand Soviet Scheme for Water in Central Asia Is Foundering nytimes.com
[ It turns out California isn't the only place they grow rice in the desert . . . ]
The craving for water has turned the Aral Sea, once the world's sixth-largest inland ocean, into a shrunken, dust-shrouded necklace of lifeless brine lakes.
Still, the nations are thirsty. Their demand for water already exceeds the entire annual flow of the two rivers by 25 percent. Adding to the pressure, Afghanistan, whose right to river water was ignored during Taliban rule, is poised to reclaim a share of the bigger river, the Amu.
The five neighbors have swelling populations — growing 15 percent a decade, with a third of the residents 13 or younger. That presents their governments with the challenge of creating more jobs and growing more food, even as the water supply is divided ever more thinly.
They also are not keeping up the waterworks, causing more waste. In Soviet times, the Kremlin spent at least $60 an acre every year to keep the water systems in repair. Uzbekistan currently spends less than $25 an acre; Tajikistan, reeling from civil war, spends $4.
One result is an irrigation network beset by staggering waste. Now in disrepair, some parts waste more water than they deliver.
The Karakum Canal, an 837-mile man-made river in the Turkmenistan desert, appears from the air as a thin line fringed by a miles-wide band of weeds. The government admits that 28 percent of its water vanishes into the sands. Scientists put the figure closer to 60 percent.
The region grew used to free water, in profligate supply. One example is in the tiny village of Dzhalagash, along Kazakhstan's shadeless southern border not far from the Syr's banks. Here the rainfall averages just 5.9 inches a year, yet the preferred crop is rice. |
