OREANDA-NEWS. On April 07, 2008 in the House of Government, President Nursultan Nazarbayev held a working session on the issue of constructing Koksaray’s water reservoir in the Southern part of the country, reported the Official website www.akorda.kz.

It is known that the construction of this water regulating object has been discussed for many years. Recently, Kazakhstan’s Government scrupulously considered this problem and supported the idea of its fastest completion.

However, this decision of the Government has had an ambiguous response from the community and governorate of one of the country’s regions. In this regard, the President decided to personally consider this issue and to weight all supporting and opposing views of the project.

Prime Minister Karim Masimov, Deputy Prime Minister Umirzak Shukeev, Minister for emergency situations Vladimir Bozhko, Chairman of the Committee for water resources Anatoly Riabcev, governor of the Southern Kazakhstan region Nurgali Ashimov, director of the Kazhydrovodhoz Institute Leonid Dmitriev and others involved people reported to the President on the conclusions made by the working group studied the problem of constructing Koksaray’s Counter-Regulator on the Syrdaria River.

According their reports, the situation is as follows.

Starting from 1993, Kyrgyzstan has been exploiting Toktagul’s water reservoir in “energy” mode what means very alternating flow to the Syrdaria River. In winter time, water volumes are 2,5 times greater and this leads to numerous floods in villages and towns of Southern Kazakhstan. This also was the reason of this year’s flood.

In addition in recent years, Uzbekistan reduced water volumes flowing to Arnasay’s water reservoir, which consequently could not serve as the counter-regulator accumulating excessive water volumes from Kyrgyzstan. As a result, the Shardarinskoe water reservoir cannot accommodate excessive water volumes of the Syrdaria River.

It was noted at the session that funds allocated on eliminating consequences of the recent flood from republican and local budgets would be equal to 12 billion tenges. The flood destroyed more than 3000 houses and social objects in the Southern Kazakhstan region. In addition, the Ministry for emergency situations spent other 3.8 billion tenges in order to cope with the emergency situation in the Syrdaria River region. Hence, the absence of an effective counter-regulator caused additional expenditures of 130 million dollars only this year.

This can be repeated every year threatening 20 villages in the Southern Kazakhstan region and 50 villages in the Kyzylorda region.

The main threat is that large water volumes could destroy the Shardarinskoe water reservoir what would lead to a catastrophe in the region.

Kazakhstan has to have a spare water reservoir that could compensate the absence of flow from Arnasay’s water reservoir in order to ensure the security of the Shardarinskoe water reservoir, to control situation in the Syrdaria River region, to provide water supplement for agricultural enterprises in the Kyzylorda region. These functions could be implemented by Koksaray’s counter-regulator that could be built near to the village of Koksaray.

According to its Technical Economic Specifications, Koksaray’s Counter-Regulator is not designed to store water for a long period. Its main purpose is to accumulate excessive water volumes of spring floods for three-four months and then direct them to agricultural consumers and downstream natural ecological systems. It is also important that the reservoir will accumulate only pure winter waters.

After considering the opposing views, the President summarized the prolonged argue.

“This is not an easy decision to spend such significant funds in order to build a new water reservoir. But we have no choice. Therefore, we have to build the Koksaray water reservoir. That is such a social object as, for example, gas pipeline from the Western part of Kazakhstan to its Southern part: these projects are not profitable, but solve a lot of problems,” the President said.

In addition, the President instructed to hold explanatory work in the Kyzylorda region on this issue, because some people there mistakenly believe that the construction of the reservoir could pollute the Syrdaria River and to worsen the ecological situation in the Aral region.

“Residents of Kyzylorda must take into account the opinion and professional evaluations of specialists and scientists. In that case, they will understand that this project will be very useful for the region’s population and will improve the ecological situation of Small Aral,” the Head of State said.