Project begins for revival of (part of) the Aral Sea

From the NY Times: August 5 2003

$85 Million Project Begins for Revival of the Aral Sea

By CHRISTOPHER PALA


KOKARAL, Kazakhstan — After nearly half a century of studying and deploring the drying up of the Aral Sea, one of the world's greatest environmental disasters, an international agency is building a dike to resuscitate part of the sea.

There is broad agreement that it is impossible to return the sea level to its pre-1960 level, 72 feet higher than it is now. That was before the rivers that fed it were diverted to irrigate cotton fields and rice paddies.

The World Bank is financing the next best option, an $85 million project to revive the northern part of the sea, known as the Small Sea, while giving up on the largely dead Big Sea to the south.

Work on the project, an eight-mile dike, started here last month. Officials expect three miles to be completed by Dec. 31, with the rest to be finished next year, Yuri Ponomarev, the site manager for the main contractor, from Moscow, said in an interview here.

(snip)

"I think there would be net positive ecological and economic benefits, even taking into account potential damage to the southern sea," said Dr. Philip P. Micklin, a retired professor of geography at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo who specializes in the Aral Sea. "And given the money available and the magnitude of problems, I guess it's the best one could expect."

(snip)

More: http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/05/science/earth/05ARAL.html

Glad to see this problem being addressed. This is one of the worst ecological disasters of human history.

It has a way of depleting the nutrients in soil, and it cannot be grown without irrigation, apparently. Here is where the hemp folks should chime in.

Here a site that shows maps of the Aral Sea drying up since 1960. The article is about diverting other rivers to the Aral, to my knowledge a dead idea but keeps coming back.

http://www.fragilecologies.com/oct09_95.html

http://english.pravda.ru/cis/2002/04/09/27464.html

http://www.globalpolicy.org/security/natres/water/2002/1216ru.htm

For more information on th Aral Sea see:

http://www.american.edu/ted/ARAL.HTM

http://visearth.ucsd.edu/VisE_Int/aralsea/

Here is a drawing of the water shed of the Amu Darya, the main water source for the Aral Sea:
http://pdf.wri.org/watersheds_asia_p2_71.pdf

And the watershed for the Ob River:

http://www.iucn.org/themes/wani/eatlas/pdf/as/as23.pdf

Notice the Amu Darya and Ob Rivers Watersheds are next to each other and has NO major mountians between them. Some indications that the Ob flowed into the Amu Darya during the last Ice Age (Thus building up the two huge Ice age lakes. The Lakes started to disappear as the Ob flowed North into the Arctic after the end of the Ice Age).